


The Smuggler and the Scoundrel

by MayhemCirheryn



Category: Pirates of the Caribbean (Movies), Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Man's Chest (2006)
Genre: F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-02-16
Updated: 2015-02-24
Packaged: 2017-11-29 12:33:30
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 10
Words: 39,421
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/687003
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/MayhemCirheryn/pseuds/MayhemCirheryn
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Disgraced and grieving after losing most of his crew, former Commodore James Norrington has only one goal left to him: to reach Tortuga and disappear. But the voyage from Tripoli is a long one and as James soon discovers, things aboard the English privateer, the Glory, are not all they seem to be...most especially her captain, Edward Grace.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Minorca

**Author's Note:**

> Originally written in 2006 and posted on ff.net under the pseudonym Mayhem O'Malley.  
> ***Note: This version has been edited. Kind of a lot, because 1) my writing has changed significantly, and 2) new things about the characters revealed themselves. This means the originally posted version is...different. So while that version will tell you what happens, this one will tell it better, and flow more smoothly into the sequel.

… _It is therefore proven to be true that you, James Norrington, possessed of rank and title of Commodore, did repeatedly defy direct orders to return to your command at Port Royal and that you did, willingly and in full knowledge of the danger, order His Majesty’s ship,_ Dauntless _, to sail through a most violent storm, resulting in severe damage to the ship and deaths of two officers and 432 men of her crew. For these actions you are hereby stripped of all title and rank and discharged without honor from the service of His Majesty’s Royal Navy…_

… _deaths of two officers and 432 men…_

… _willingly and in full knowledge of the danger…_

It had become a kind of mantra in his head, an acrid repetition of accusations he had been unable and unwilling to deny and the sententious words that had delivered the death blow to the life he had so painstakingly built.

But, in some far off corner of his mind, he had known. He had known as the battered wreck of the once proud _Dauntless_ limped into harbor at Port Mahon with all that remained of her crew. It had been something of a morbid surprise to him that the survivors of his folly hadn’t mutinied and killed him, as it would have been well within their right to do. Perhaps it would have been better if they had. He had known when he was brought before the Vice-Admiralty Court on Minorca the inescapable fate that would befall him. But for all his preparation, to hear those words had beaten and broken the very core of his existence, for what was he if not a military man? In light of his previously sterling record of service, the Vice-Admiralty Court had “allowed” him to resign involuntarily. This coup de grace made no difference; the Admiralty knew and _he_ knew what the truth of the situation was. A discharge without honor was a discharge without honor no matter how you packaged it.

How could he have let it happen? How had he allowed himself to become so obsessive, so single-minded in his pursuit of Sparrow that he had let it supercede his sense of duty? He had needed it, that was how. Elizabeth’s sudden and very public rejection had hit him harder than he cared to admit, and so he had turned to his career—the one sure thing in his life—with fanatic zeal. He had occupied his every waking moment with charts and maps and the heady thrill of the hunt, just to keep himself from dwelling on thoughts of _her_. And it had worked— too well. _“By remembering that I serve others, Mr. Sparrow, not only myself.”_ How well he recalled saying it! He had discarded those high-minded ideals; after all, _serving others_ had lost him the woman he loved. Capturing the _Black Pearl_ became a personal mission of revenge and self-validation, but serving himself had proven just as ineffective; it had cost him his crew, his commission, and quite possibly a bit of his sanity. Sparrow had driven him to it, of course. If it hadn’t been for Sparrow, he would still be the Commodore, he would still have Elizabeth, he would still have his _life_. All he had now were the clothes on his back and a bitter, boiling anger centered solely on that flailing, malapert, low-life…pirate!

Damn Sparrow! And damn his ship! He hadn’t chased him all the way to the bloody Mediterranean for _this_! He hadn’t trailed him across the Atlantic to have his ambitions whipped into oblivion by a _storm_! The storm…God, he had _known_ it was bad. He could still see the disbelieving faces of his crew; they had known they were doomed, but had followed his damned orders anyway. He could still hear Gillette pleading with him over the howl of the increasing gale…

“ _Sir, we must turn back! We can’t ride this out!”_

His own voice: _“We can! Keep to the present course!”_

“ _Commodore! James, for God’s sake, man, listen to reason!”_

… _willingly and in full knowledge of the danger…_

It was his fault, he knew. 434 men, dead by his order. 434 deaths on his conscience. Yes, he knew the fault was his, but brutal honesty was a poor companion, and it was so much easier to blame Sparrow.

James slammed the bottle to the table with more force than he’d intended, surveying its contents with morose satisfaction. One month. One month since the court-martial. One paltry month and already he was regularly drowning his sorrows like any common vagrant; like any _pirate_. He had never intended to turn to rum when he had first wandered into this grungy Port Mahon inn a fortnight ago. He had never been a drinking man. It had been his invariable opinion that over-indulgence was a vile practice not befitting a man of station, but when the barmaid had plunked the grimy glass bottle of amber liquid down in front of him, the idea had suddenly seemed appealing. _Drink up, Commodore_ , he had told himself. _What have you left to lose?_ In his… _previous life_ , he had never been able to comprehend the revolting attachment men could have to their rum. In his previous life, he'd been able to sleep. After nearly fifteen nights with a bottle of the stuff constantly in his own hand, he understood.

 _After all_ , he thought as he raised the bottle to his lips again. _I am no longer a man of station._ The idea was perversely amusing.

Slumped over a table in the dingy, malodorous common of the lowliest inn on Minorca, he was hardly recognizable. Only the storm-tossed vestiges of his powdered wig and the gold braiding on his rapidly staining coat betrayed him as a man who had once had honor and stature and a higher place in the world. _Honor and stature?_ Such things were not for the likes of him, a disheveled, red-eyed wretch with an increasingly desperate grip on a bottle. No, such things as honor and stature were not for him anymore. He threw back his head and downed the last mouthful of his third bottle in one vicious swallow, choking and coughing as it cut its way down his throat. _This_ was his lot now.

His surroundings were blurring significantly, but it was far from sufficient; another rum was in order. And most likely another after that. Bleary though his vision was, it was clear to him that the serving maids were all otherwise occupied. It seemed to be a requirement of this particular inn that all women employed prostitute themselves to the guests. Though several overtures had been made by the unabashed servers, that was one base habit he hadn’t fallen prey to, at least not yet. But never mind; he could fetch his own drink. James pushed himself up from the table and a sudden rush of vertigo sent him reeling into the nearby wall, barely able to keep himself upright. A giddy, cheerless laugh escaped him. Alcohol was an insidious thing—he was farther along than he’d thought. That dim realization didn’t deter him in the slightest. He made his way toward the bar, the floor pitching like the deck of a ship, though to his irritation and scornful amusement he couldn’t keep his footing the way he could at sea. He all but fell into the bar and, leaning heavily on the counter, slapped down a vague number of coins. The inn master sneered and pushed a full bottle at him with a wheezing chuckle and an all-too-knowing look in his eyes. James stumbled back to his table and glanced over his shoulder at the inn master, who had put his head together with a grizzled customer. The two men were whispering conspiratorially and once or twice the inn master pointed in his direction.

“Damned gossip,” he snarled, taking a long pull at his drink. These were Minorca’s slums for God’s sake! Why were these vulgar dregs of society—which, he reminded himself, he now numbered among—so interested? Surely Navy derelicts were a common occurrence in a place such as this! It was astounding and infuriating how fast and far the rumor of his disgrace had spread. _“That man there,”_ they would say. _“’E must be that mad officer I ‘eard about!”_ James snorted. Mad indeed! Perhaps he was—it wouldn’t surprise him. They may not know his name or the cause of his present situation, but their whispers burned his ears all the same. He had to get off this island—had to go somewhere where no one would neither know nor care who he had been and who he was now. And he knew _exactly_ where that was. It sickened him that he had such a strong desire to go to _that_ _place_ , but he had sunk this low, what was a little lower? He had nothing to lose by it—except his remaining money and the best way to lose that was to a barkeep. The crux of the matter was he had no way of getting there.

If the voice hadn’t been so distinctive James would have allowed it to slide away into the noise of the common, but after weeks of dropped H’s and crude sailors’ argot, cultivated speech reverberated in his head like a bell. He was simply enjoying the sound of it when one word managed to snare his muddled consciousness— _Tortuga._

He looked around and, with some difficulty because his eyes refused to focus properly, spotted the owner of the voice—a scrawny youth in a black coat who was conversing with the brawny man at the table behind him. The young man stood and with a few final words to his companion, began to move towards the door. As he passed by, James reached out an unsteady hand and, by luck, managed to catch hold of the young man’s sleeve.

“Something I can do for you, my good man?” the startled lad asked. Blinking blearily, James tried to force his uncooperative tongue to form a coherent phrase; it was irritatingly challenging to string words together at the moment.

“You said…you said you were sailing for Tortuga?” he managed at last.

“Not directly—we’ve some other business to attend to—but yes, I plan to put in at Tortuga.”

 _Other business?_ Other business was unimportant. “Can you get me there?”

The young man frowned and pulled his sleeve free. “I’m sorry. I don’t take on passengers.”

“Then I’ll crew for you!” James rasped.

_I just need to get off this damned island!_

The captain stood back and gave him an appraising once-over. “You wouldn’t be the first drunkard to sign to my crew,” he said. “You know something about sailing, I take it?”

“The Navy was my life,” James growled bitterly. “I should think I know enough.”

“Very well,” said the young man. He tapped his companion on the shoulder. “Pen and ink if you please, Mr. Ames.”

A rumpled paper was smoothed onto the table, an inkwell and a woebegone quill were set beside it and James scrawled his name onto the docket. He was distantly aware of a faint apprehension, a half-formed thought that he should ask what the “other business” was before signing himself to it, but alcohol and bitter thoughts had long since clouded his judgement and he was desperate to put as much sea as possible between himself and Minorca.

He didn’t notice the captain’s eyes widen when he looked at the list.

“That’s settled, then,” said the young man, tucking the docket inside his coat. He paused for a moment, then leaned both hands on the table and spoke in slow, concise words. “We sail tomorrow at noon, so it would be prudent of you to make this your last rum for the night.”

James gaped at the man who was now his captain as if he’d never seen anything quite like him before. He laughed. Last rum for the night? What sort of absurd suggestion was that?

The young man took no notice of this, but addressed his companion at the next table. “Mr. Ames. You are to…escort your new crewmate to the ship in the morning.”

“Aye, Captain,” the man replied in a gruff voice.

The captain straightened and with a curt “Good night”, strode out of the inn.

James leaned his head back and smirked, an expression that was becoming more and more common with him. Tortuga…a veritable haven for a disgrace such as himself, where no one would speculate about the high-up Navy man fallen on hard times and whisper about court-martials.

“’E’s serious about the rum, ye know, mate.”

He turned, swaying dangerously, to face the burly man—Mr. Ames, had it been? Grinning derisively, he raised his bottle in a mock toast. “So am I, _mate_ ,” he said and took another drink.

* * *

 

The Mediterranean sun climbed steadily towards its apex, drenching the bustling hubbub of the Port Mahon docks in prickling heat. The playful sea caught the sun’s rays, tossing them skyward again in a rippling dance of brilliant white light. It was a beautiful sight—a beautiful sight that James was doing his utmost to avoid. The excess of the previous night was making itself felt in the most violent way possible, and the light glancing off the mirror-like sea was by no means aiding his condition. His head felt as though it were being split open from the inside and the rolling, gleaming waves in combination with the less than aromatic scents permeating the air were making his stomach twist unpleasantly.

“Ye’re lookin’ a bit green ‘bout the gills, mate.”

 _God above, why does he have to be so_ loud?

“Yes, thank you for informing me, Mr. Ames,” James said with a grimace. The bear-like man was either something of a lack-wit or was being cruelly clever in his thundering attempts at conversation.

“Perhaps a spot of breakfast will do ye good,” Mr. Ames boomed. “I’ve a sausage or two left from me own if ye’d care for one.”

James had felt his gorge rise at the mere mention of breakfast, much less the idea of sausages, and had to fight down a wave of nausea before replying. “No, thank you,” he snapped. “I’m rather unwell, if you hadn’t noticed.”

Mr. Ames grinned a wide, wicked grin. “Oh, aye. _Unwell_.”

_Ah. Cruelly clever it is._

“Thought you might like to know,” Mr. Ames continued in his clamorous voice. “The captain’s called Grace.”

“Grace?”

“Aye, Captain Edward Grace. Best private hand for England ye’ll meet and shrewd as the Devil to boot. It’s a lucky man what gets to sail under ‘im. He don't take on new boys often. Likes his crews small and loyal, he does.”

 _Shrewd as the Devil?_ Mr. Ames may have meant it as the highest of praise, but James wasn’t so sure he would consider himself lucky to sail under a man who had common attributes with the Devil.

“By ‘private hand’ you mean this Captain Grace is a privateer?” James asked. He had wanted to avoid talking, as the sound of his own voice made his head throb, but now that he was sober, he had to admit he was curious about what he’d got himself into by signing the ship’s roster.

“Wantin’ to be sure ye haven’t signed the Articles, are ye?” Mr. Ames laughed. “Never fear, mate. Captain’ll explain it to ye.”

James rubbed his aching temples, frowning. The uncomfortable notion that he may have unknowingly signed the pirate Articles had indeed occurred to him, but what made it such an uneasy idea was that he didn’t seem to care whether he had or not. _Commodore_ James Norrington would rather have put a pistol to his own head than serve under the black flag, but James Norrington without rank or obligation was completely apathetic about it. Survival was his priority now, and to survive he would need money—how he acquired it was beside the point. Strange how quickly his mindset had changed.

“There ye have it!” Mr. Ames thundered, breaking him out of his caustic reverie. “Beautiful, isn’t she?”

James cast a careless glance at the ship, a truly lovely brig. “She’ll serve her purpose, Mr. Ames,” he said; he didn’t much care what the ship looked like or what colors she flew, so long as she got him off the island.

“Ah, ye’ll come to love ‘er,” said Mr. Ames amiably. He gestured to the gangplank. “After ye, mate.”

James had hardy set foot on deck when he was accosted by the most unwelcome sound he could have imagined: the rapid, high-pitched barking of an over-excited dog.

“Always knows the Navy men, our Oliver!” Mr. Ames guffawed from behind him. The filthy little creature, christened Oliver, apparently, sat yapping at him without seeming to draw breath, each bark sending lances of pain jolting through his head. It was then that he noticed the gentle rocking of the ship as those gleaming waves rolled beneath the hull. Under normal circumstances he would have paid it no mind, but after over a month ashore and in his current state…

His stomach churned. He tried to swallow and force down the acrid bile rising in his throat, but his tongue seemed to have stuck itself to the roof of his mouth. The pounding in his head intensified, throbbing in time with his pulse. And that damned dog was still barking. Someone seized him by the coat collar and shoved him up against the deck rail.

“Over the railing, if you _must_ ,” hissed a disdainful voice in his ear. His control over his insides had been sparse before, but having his gut slammed into the rail obliterated it entirely and he proceeded to lose what little there was left in his stomach.

“Either you did not take my advice or you have a very poor head for liquor,” said the voice once he had stopped retching.

He looked up to see the young man—his captain—leaning on the rail next to him, a rather smug expression on his face. Now that he wasn’t seeing him through a rum-induced haze, James had to wonder just how young this young man was. He was tall enough, but his build was slight and there wasn’t so much as a wisp of a beard on his chin. Unlike the crew, which seemed something of a rag-tag bunch, he dressed like a merchant captain, with a black, tri-corn hat and unadorned coat and his yellow hair confined in a queue.

“Now, then,” said Captain Grace, suddenly professional. “James—it is James, isn’t it?”

“Yes.”

“Good. I couldn’t be sure; your hand was rather illegible—I didn’t even bother trying to decrypt your surname. But anyrate, I just want a brief word with you about the way things work on my ship.” His tone remained cordial but there was a cold gleam in his eyes that James knew all too well—how often had he seen it gazing back at him from the eyes of his own reflection? It was authority; unquestionable, absolute authority. That telltale gaze wasn’t gained just by giving orders; it came from expecting that those orders would be obeyed. James hadn’t seen himself in a mirror for weeks, but he suspected that that sharpness was something he no longer possessed.

_Like so much else._

“The _Glory_ is a privateer vessel,” Captain Grace continued. “I have my letters of marque from the Governor of St. Kitts to take Spanish and pirate ships. We don’t bother with pirates unless we’re certain we have them out-gunned, if not out-manned. As to rules aboard, there is to be no gaming for money and no brawling; all disputes are settled in a civilized manner. Theft from a fellow crewmate, or from myself, is punishable by lashes. Stealing from the prizes we take is theft from the entire crew, and I will have no reservations about keelhauling you. Your weapons are to be kept in good order and you must be ready for action at all times. Speaking of which, that is a fine sword—stolen, I assume?”

James glared, gripping the gold filigreed handle possessively. “You assume incorrectly,” he snapped, making no attempt to keep the resentment from his voice. This sword…he didn’t deserve to carry it. It was too strong a reminder of things as they had been—things as they _should_ have been. He didn’t even want to look at it; he kept it hidden best he could beneath his frock coat. Actually using the damned thing was out of the question, and so he had stolen a pistol off an unconscious man at the inn. It had been the first betrayal of his values; something C _ommodore Norrington_ would never have done. But the scoundrel he was becoming was an opportunist and he had learned quickly that in the bleak cesspits of society, an unarmed man was as good as dead.

Captain Grace straightened, clasping his hands behind his back, still smiling congenially. “My rules are simple, James,” he said. “But the simplest of all is this: I give the orders and you follow them. Nothing you’re not used to, I’m sure.”

James felt a sudden prick of irrational anger and, ignoring the pounding in his head, spoke before he could stop himself.

“To be quite frank, _Captain_ ,” he spat, his tone venomous. “I am far more accustomed to giving orders than to following them.”

Captain Grace’s amiable demeanor never slipped as he surveyed James from head to toe, clearly taking in his bedraggled wig and officer’s uniform.

“So I surmised,” he said, fixing him with that imperative stare that reminded James so much of his former self.

James wrenched his eyes away and stared out at the horizon, scowling. _“Nothing you’re not used to”_. By God, how that had rankled! He knew he shouldn’t have responded the way he had, but it was yet another unneeded reminder of just how much he had lost to Jack Sparrow.

“If you’re through brooding, Cromley will take you below.”

He turned to face his superior, a sardonic smirk twisting his lips. “Quite through, Captain,” he said and made to follow this Cromley fellow towards to hatch, but Captain Grace stopped him as he passed.

“Oh, and James,” he said, sounding bitingly offhand. “About your drinking. It’s of no importance to me how inebriated you are at night when you’re off duty, but don’t expect any sympathy when you are facing the inevitable consequences as you are now.”

God in Heaven, was this man _always_ smiling? Even his insults were delivered with a courteous air! James tore his arm out of the captain’s grip and stormed to the hatch where Cromley was waiting.

_By Christ! The boy is grinning, too!_

“Is everyone on this ship always so cheerful?” he growled.

Cromley, a brown-haired boy who couldn’t be any older than fifteen, raised his eyebrows. “Captain gettin’ to ye, eh, mate?” he asked.

James glared. “No.”

Cromley shrugged and grinned even wider, but—thankfully—didn’t press the matter.

The dim light of the hold was a relief after the glaring sun, and James felt some of the ache in his head subside as his eyes relaxed. He was just beginning to feel slightly more alert when a shrill sound from above made him cringe. He looked up, squinting painfully, to see that _dog_ staring sappily at him from the deck above. He groaned and moved further into the hold, looking around for Cromley, who seemed to have vanished.

 _Of course there would be a ship’s dog_ , he thought as the creature in question continued to whimper. _And of course it would see fit to plague me with incessant whining._

Cromley reappeared suddenly from the depths of the hold, carrying a baldric.“Captain wants ye to have somethin’ proper fer that fancy blade of yourn,” he said, handing it to James. He glanced up toward the dog. “Annoyin’ little rat, in’n ‘e?”

“Exceedingly.”

“He’ll leave ye be if ye give ‘im a good kick,” Cromley said. “But ‘ave a mind about it. If the captain catches ye at it, she’ll lash ye naked to the mainmast.”

James’s fingers slipped on the belt buckle.

_Surely I misheard that?_

“Did you say ‘she’?” he asked, incredulous.

“Aye.”

James shook his head, an action he immediately regretted, as it made him rather dizzy. This was ludicrous.

“You mean to say that the captain of this ship is female?”

Cromley grinned. “Hides it well, don’t she?”

James frowned, remembering a sailor’s irrational suspicion of a young girl, long ago in another life. A woman as captain? He wasn’t a superstitious man himself, but it didn’t make sense, not even to him.

“I thought a woman aboard was bad luck,” he said.

“There’s some what thinks that way, to be sure. But they don’t sail under Miss Grace.”

“Miss Grace?”

“S’what the crew calls ‘er,” Cromley explained, clapping him on the back in a comradely way. “She don’t know, a’ course. To ‘er face we call ‘er Captain, but ‘mongst ourselves she’s Miss Grace. We’re that fond of ‘er, see?”

_A woman captain… I suppose I’ve seen stranger things._

“Well,” he mumbled, following his crewmate into the hold. “It certainly explains the lack of a beard.”


	2. Open Water

Captain Grace, alias Edward, sat behind the desk in her cabin, reviewing two rather troubling pieces of correspondence. She leaned back in her chair and dragged her fingers through her hair, which had been long since freed from its queue. Five weeks at sea, and she had abandoned the immaculate apparel of the merchant captain. She dressed like her crew now—a shirt that may have once been white, a tattered doublet, worn breeches and weather-stained boots. Of her merchant guise she retained only the black frock coat, which was for purposes of warmth rather than a mark of her captaincy; she needed no such paltry things to affirm her authority.

“Well, Richard,” she said. “I’ve a letter here from Henry Skinner requesting that _Mr_. Hart meet him at Port Royal. What do you think of that?”

Richard Ames tugged at his beard, frowning in thought. “Skinner…”he said. “The Charleston merchant?”

“The very same.”

“What would `e be askin’ to meet us at Port Royal for?”

“That’s just it,” Grace said, standing and rapping her knuckles sharply on the letter in question. “He doesn’t specify.”

“Seems suspicious to me, Captain.”

“Suspicious indeed, Richard. In fact, I imagine we may have a rather difficult situation on our hands.”

“`Ow do you make that?”

“Port Royal is not convenient for Skinner, nor is it safe,” Grace said, beginning to tap her fingers methodically on her desk. “Why ask to meet there when Nassau is both closer and more secure? I think it is reasonable to assume that he has been apprehended.”

“An’ blackmailed,” Richard supplied. “But that’s just yer guess.”

Grace plucked the second letter off her desk with a flourish. “More than just a guess, I’m afraid.”

“Isaac’s written to ye, then?”

“He has, and thank God for that,” Grace said with a tense laugh. “The East India Company is closing in on smuggling in the colonies.”

Richard exploded with a string of vehement curses and Grace glanced down at her cousin’s letter.

… _If you want my advice, keep your head down for a while. Our agents in the colonies will sniff out the merchants first, but that could mean trouble for you if they extort your clients. Yes, they will resort to extortion; do not disbelieve it. I, personally, do not approve of this, but some questionable dealings have been occurring of late…_

Grace let the letter fall from her hand.

_Oh, God, Isaac! However do I thank you for this?_

“So if Skinner’s been found out…” Richard trailed off.

“They’ll use him to lure us in,” Grace finished. She grimaced. “It’s fortunate for us that his skills in deception are lacking.”

_And that Isaac has no morals to speak of._

“`Ow do we slip through this one, Captain?” Richard asked. “If `e’s askin’ for _Mr_. Hart that means yer ruse is up an’ done for.”

“All we know for certain is that Skinner must be dealt with, and promptly,” Grace mused, starting to pace. “Since he believes me to be _Mrs_. Hart, what we need is a _Mr_. Hart to serve as a distraction.”

“Ye mean to take this up!” Richard exclaimed, a note of disbelief in his voice. “Captain, ye _know_ how risky it’d be to put in at Port Royal!”

“What choice do we have?” Grace snapped over her shoulder. “I know very well that this is a trap, but wherever Skinner is, we cannot afford to let him live. If that place happens to be Port Royal, then so be it.” Effectively chastised, Richard fell silent, allowing Grace to think.

_God, what a puzzle this is!_

It was going to require some fancy footwork to alleviate the situation without any of her crew—or herself for that matter—winding up at the nonexistent mercy of the East India Trading Company, but after nearly twelve years in this business, Grace considered herself well versed in the art of deception. There were always possibilities; one had only to explore all options.

_I could refuse the summons and demand to meet at Nassau._

A worthy prospect. Nassau was a place of barely restrained anarchy, so it was far more…appropriate for her purpose. Still, it was a risk, since wherever this rendezvous took place Skinner was likely to be watched, but the question was how much more of a risk was Port Royal?

_Decidedly more; there’s Fort Charles to deal with, and I don’t know the town well enough to disappear after the fact._

She stopped pacing. There it was; that elusive possibility.

“What’s in yer `ead, Captain?” Richard inquired.

“Our best option may be to send word to Skinner once we reach St. Kitts that we will meet at Nassau or we will not meet at all, but with that we risk rousing suspicions I don't need. I think...we can do this at Port Royal, after all.” Grace mused. She turned on her heel, grinning at her first mate.

“I’m afraid I don’t take yer meanin’, Captain,” Richard said.

“You recall the man we took on at Port Mahon?”

Richard snorted. “Sir James, ye mean? `Course I do. Fellow’s been drunk near every night since we passed Gibraltar!”

“Merciful God!” Grace groaned, halfway between amusement and shock. She crossed back to her desk and picked up Skinner’s letter. “ _Sir_ James, did you say?”

“Aye. Young Cromley thought it up. `E’s got some wild notions and 'e figures the man used to be a knight.”

Grace smiled. Joshua Cromley, though too energetic by far, was a remarkably intuitive boy.

“He isn’t far wrong,” she said. “That rum hound you call Sir James has more hangings to his name than any other officer in the Caribbean.” She watched in wry amusement as the expression on Richard’s face changed slowly from incomprehension to open-mouthed incredulity.

“Ye can’t mean…” he stammered. “That can’t be--”

“The Scourge himself,” Grace said, thoroughly enjoying the dramatic effect of her words.

Richard shook his head. “Mother of God!” he said. “`Ow’d `e end up on Minorca? An’ in the _Bush and Thorn_ , of all places!”

Grace smiled and, slowly, relishing the sound of shredding parchment, began to tear Skinner’s letter. “ _That_ ,” she said. “Is precisely what we need to find out.”

 

* * *

 

He couldn’t remember the last time he had looked at the stars just for the pleasure of looking. Trained to the stringent confines of navigation, he had never spared a glance for the thousands upon thousands of cold, blinking specks outside those few necessary shapes. Now, unfettered by duty, he saw only the vast sweep of the heavens, gleaming and diamond-like, uninhibited by the moon. By all accounts it was too fine a night to be spent at the bottom of a bottle, but that was his immutable intention.

Sprawled on the deck with his back against the mainmast and a rum in his hand, James was far from content. He had hoped the demands of life at sea would somewhat deter him from these nightly bouts of insobriety, but much to his irritation his mind was frequently occupied with thoughts of Elizabeth. It was a natural consequence, really, that he found himself drinking more and sleeping less.

Was she well? Had she married Turner yet? Was she happy?

_Of course she is. It’s Turner she loves, not me. Never me._

The amount of rum in the bottle lessened considerably with that thought.

It made his blood boil to think of that _blacksmith_ occupying the place that should have rightfully been _his_. He could still remember how Elizabeth felt in his arms, pressed against his chest and clinging to his coat while the muskets fired around them—the only time he had ever held her.

The bottle came to his lips again.

She had never been his; had never _wanted_ to be his. It had all been a ploy…just a ploy.

_I’m drinking this too quickly._

Perhaps if he hadn’t been so remote, hadn’t been so damned _honorable_ …if he had acted on impulse, allowed desire to control him for just a brief moment—

_Too much thinking—not enough rum._

He tipped to bottle to his mouth again, only to find it empty.

“Damn it all!” he growled, knocking the back of his head against the mast. What had he even come up here for? And with just one bottle! The stuff was plenty watered, as he'd found to his disappointment. What kind of idiot was he that he couldn’t even get drunk properly?

If she would just get out of his head, he could sleep. If he could just forget her warm smile and her kind eyes he could have a night of peaceful, much-needed rest instead of the feverish dreams of rum-soaked oblivion.

He had to wonder, would she be willing to accept him now that he wasn’t so straight-laced? Would she find it in her heart to feel compassion, maybe even affection, for him now that he stood on the same ground as her beloved pirates?

_God, I need that drink._

He hadn’t even begun to struggle to his feet when a full bottle was thrust quite literally under his nose. Startled, he glanced up to thank his unlooked for, but most welcome companion: Captain Grace.

_Well, this is unexpected._

“What’s this, then?” he asked, eyeing the bottle with suspicion. He wanted it badly, but why would the captain be making such an offer when she had made it so clear that she disapproved?

_Does it really matter why?_

“It’s a bottle of rum,” she answered, matter-of-factly. “And not from the crew casks, either. I trust you understand its purpose.” She was smiling again, but it was a devious, conspiratorial grin that James couldn’t help but match. He took the bottle.

“And to what do I owe this sudden courtesy, Captain?” he asked once he had taken a liberal swallow. He grimaced a bit. The captain was an honest woman...this bottle was blessedly undiluted, if on the small side.

“You could consider it a token of apology for my brusque manner towards you those first few days,” she said, sitting down beside him. “But, in all God's truth, it is because I think you need it.”

“ _You_ think I need it?” James laughed. “How do you come to that conclusion?”

He was well aware of how glaringly disrespectful he was being, but the rum was starting to go to his head. Or…was it because he was no longer bound by rigid, Navy etiquette? Was he…could he possibly be _enjoying_ that?

_No, no. It’s the rum. It has to be._

“It’s been my experience that men such as you don’t turn to drink without a reason,” Grace answered, overlooking his contempt of her position. “A tragic reason, more often than not.”

He took another swig from the bottle, which was rapidly growing lighter. “Men such as me? You mean desperate, thieving scoundrels?”

“I mean officers of the Royal Navy.”

James gaped at her, mentally cursing his uniform, while she stared back with that stony gaze that demanded compliance; in the starlight it was impossible to tell what color her eyes were, but they were dark.

_Devil take you, you damn cunning harlot!_

“I may have a good bottle and a half of rum in me, but I am not at all inclined to reveal my _reason_ , as you put it,” he snarled. “And I do not take kindly to being tricked.” He turned away and threw back another burning mouthful. “Be it by my captain or no.”

Grace was silent for a moment, then, instead of chastising him for his disparaging outburst, she laughed.

_What in God’s name could possibly be comic about this?_

“Come, now, James!” she cajoled. “You were so forward with me that first day!”

James looked at her askance. She couldn’t possibly be teasing him! Could she?

_Ridiculous idea._

“I was…” he mumbled, casting his somewhat disjointed mind around for the correct word. “Hung-over, I believe is the common term.”

“True,” Grace conceded. “Though now you’re well on your way to being drunk, so it makes no difference, really.”

James didn’t answer. He had signed to this ship to avoid the questions and the speculation, and here he was caught up by it all over again! This time the only escape was over the rail into the crushing blue, and he wasn’t quite mad enough for that.

“Why are you so keen to know?” he asked after a long moment.

“Because when one of my men is as unstable as you, I generally like to know why.”

_Unstable, am I? The Admiralty thought so, too.  
_

A crooked grin on his face, James raised the bottle to his lips. “Sorry,” he said, and made short work of what was left of the rum.

_That should have lasted me far longer._

“Good God, have you finished that already?” Grace exclaimed; it was difficult to tell whether she was impressed or taken aback. Much to his surprise, she thrust another bottle into his hands.

_Oh, please!_

“Captain Grace,” he said, leaning his head against the mast with an exasperated sigh. “I suspect you are hoping the drink will do my talking for me.”

Grace shrugged. “Glad you've enough wit left to see it. I make no apologies,” she said. “But you’ll drink it all the same.”

_Too true._

He uncorked the bottle with slightly more difficulty than he had the previous; his fingers seemed to have lost some of their dexterity.

“Your health, Captain,” he said with a nod, and drank.

What a strange situation this was! Him seeing double—or very nearly—and trading companionable banter with his lady-captain. It was certainly not usual.

“I’ll make a deal with you, James,” Grace said suddenly. “Secret for secret, hmm? I’m sure you must have a query or two about me.”

She leaned closer—a bit too close for his comfort—and he inched away slightly, squinting at her rather blurred features. With her head uncovered and her hair falling about her face in wild tangles she looked much more feminine.

_Almost pretty, in fact._

Oh, yes. The rum was _definitely_ going to his head.

“I was…I…” he trailed off, caught between giving her the truth or the lie. She was his captain, for all that she was a woman, and conduct dictated that she deserved the truth, but…

“I resigned from the Navy,” he heard himself say. His voice was flat, emotionless.

_James Norrington, you’re a bloody coward!_

She said nothing, but he could feel her scrutinizing stare as yet another mouthful scorched its way down his throat.

“I’m sure you had your reasons for such an action,” Grace said, her tone suggesting that she took his simple response with a substantial grain of salt.

“I believe you owe me a secret now, Captain,” James said, wanting very much to shift the pressure off of him. He didn’t want memories of his…error battering at his head tonight.

“So I do,” Grace said with that irksome smile. “Just what is it you want to know about me, James?”

He took another ample sip of rum and looked at her languidly, a lazy smile playing at the corners of his mouth. “I would like to know how a fine lady such as yourself became captain of a ship of uncouth men.”

It may have been an effect of the considerably high amount of alcohol in his system, but he could have sworn her smile faltered for a moment.

“How I became captain?” she mused, grinning once more. “Simple enough. I was a pirate.”

“Haven’t you got that backwards?” James sputtered, laughing. “Pirates don’t become privateers…it’s the other way around.”

“Careful, James,” Grace chuckled. “Your words are slurring.”

_Excellent._

Now that he thought about it, his head did feel a bit…muzzy.

“But I assure you,” Grace continued. “I was once a pirate. Are you familiar with the means by which one becomes a pirate captain?”

“I can’t say I’ve made a study of the matter.”

“Then you will be surprised to learn that I was voted into my position.”

“Voted?” James repeated drunkenly. “That’s a strange idea.” Pirates voting for their captain? It seemed so…civilized! But if governors’ daughters could marry blacksmiths, anything was possible. He paused, on the verge of taking another drink, and glanced sidelong at his captain.

“What would make _pirates_ vote a woman captain?” he asked. Even inebriated as he was, it was apparent he had asked a very delicate question. Grace was no longer smiling and she was no longer looking at him. She stood suddenly, staring straight ahead, her expression unreadable and her stance defiant.

“They have their reasons,” she said, and without so much as a parting glance, she was gone.

James stared after her, frowning. The icy tone of Grace’s voice had cut through the alcohol somewhat and started his mind turning again, albeit sluggishly. Clearly, he wasn’t the only one who would prefer some things be kept under the ivy bush, and he knew it would be a very foolish thing, indeed, to inquire again what those reasons might have been.

So she had been voted into the captain’s cabin, had she? And by a band of pirates no less, which meant she must exhibit certain…qualities prized by such ungovernable men. Qualities any pirate would possess…qualities that Sparrow must possess. James shook his head, causing the deck to spin even more than it already was. Qualities? No, ‘ _traits’_ was a more apt word; ‘qualities’ had such a positive connotation, and anything remotely connected with that swaggering vagrant was certainly not positive.

‘ _Shrewd as the Devil’, indeed!_

The association was completely sensible, now. Only a pirate would liken his captain to the Devil and mean it as a compliment.

_Intriguing. Most intriguing._

He didn’t realize, as he drained the bottle to the dregs, that his mind was no longer occupied with thoughts of a certain lady from Port Royal.


	3. The Red Jack

As every sailor knew and every romantic-minded landsman refused to believe, life on a ship was, for the majority of the time, so dull it was excruciating, and the _Glory_ was no exception. The voyage had slipped into a familiar, cyclic routine, each day blending into the next, and that into the next until it was all a ceaseless monotony of sea and sky and unbroken horizon.

For James, it was nothing short of torture. Forbidden to drink during the day—a directive that applied only to him it seemed—and deprived of the duties and academic pursuits that had accompanied his previous expeditions, he found himself with nothing but his thoughts to occupy his time. _That_ was a most disagreeable situation, and so to avoid it, he allowed Cromley to regale him with a constant stream of stories over endless games of dice and cards. Despite the boy's irritating cheerfulness, James could not bring himself to treat him with the same cynical contempt he did the rest of the crew. In fact, much to his chagrin, Cromley had become almost like a younger brother to him. Almost. As for the rest of the crew, they primarily ignored him except for a handful of men—including Ames—who seemed to have an odd sort of pity for him. The captain, too, came to speak to him every now and again, though such times were rare and after that first nocturnal chat, she never again mentioned her unusual rise to captaincy. And he had gained one other constant companion besides Cromley: Oliver, the ship's dog, had taken to keeping him company when he was above deck at night. Though the animal was still an occasional nuisance, James had to grudgingly admit that he found it somewhat comforting to have the little creature curled up beside him while he avoided sleep and the cruelty of hearing the death shrieks of his men over and over and over in his dreams.

And so the weeks wore on—the dice rolled, the rum flowed, the waves crashed, onward into what seemed an eternity. Until one day, at long last, something happened.

"Up with you, Sir James!"

The cheery voice splintered the dark and the quiet with all the force of a broadside. James groaned. No, no, _no_ , it could _not_ be time for him to be up…far too early…

"I hardly believe it is time for my watch, Cromley," he mumbled, eyes still resolutely closed.

"Watch? Who said anythin' 'bout watch? Get up, man! There's a Spaniard off our port an' Miss Grace means to take 'er!"

There was no thought in the action. Ingrained military instincts took over and James flung himself out of his hammock, slinging his baldric over his shoulder as he dashed up the stairs after Cromley.

The deck was a scene of familiar chaos: men darting back and forth, tightening lines, loading pistols, running out guns, and strapping on cutlasses. The air was so charged with reckless excitement it was nearly tangible. James felt an irrational, unwarranted sense of joy flooding through him. Here, at last, out of all the topsy-turvy mess that was his life, was something that he understood. It wasn't that he enjoyed violence, far from it, but he was a natural tactician and a fighter—battle was his domain, and that was something the Admiralty couldn't strip away.

James looked up, squinting against the sun and was unsurprised to see Spanish colors flying from the mainmast. It was a common ruse, though not one he'd ever used himself. Perhaps sometime in the future—

_What future?_

His mildly good mood dissipated as quickly as it had come. There was no future for him now, not really. The chances of him ever commanding his own vessel again were…slight, if not nonexistent.

_I couldn't be trusted with such responsibility. Not anymore._

He scowled, watching the red, white, and yellow banner ripple and snap in the Atlantic wind. No, he could never command his own ship. He was an unstable commander, no longer fit to serve.

 _What does it matter? The_ Glory _still sails for England, and I can still fight._

The thought was unbidden and utterly bewildering…but undeniably true. Frowning more in confusion than in anger, James looked out to the ocean. There was their quarry: a three-masted merchant vessel just off the port bow. She was close; very close. Well within range…

"Do you miss it, Sir James?"

He turned to answer his captain. "Yes, I do," he said.

Grace spared no glance for him. Her eyes were locked on the Spanish ship, calculating and cold, and almost…cruel? She was wearing her hat, and her hair had been pulled into a queue once again. She stood with her hands behind her back, feet planted squarely on the deck; a strangely familiar position. Her eyes narrowed suddenly.

"Keep close to me once we board, James," she said. Then, stepping swiftly away from him, she raised her voice. "All hands to port and run up the red jack!"

As one, the crew of the _Glory_ swarmed the port rail, brandishing everything from muskets to boarding axes, yelling fit to raise the dead. The noise and the excitement and the scent of gunpowder sparked the fighter in James and rational thought retreated. He drew his sword for the first time in months and in a fit of recklessness, jumped onto the taffrail, a raw scream tearing from his throat. He didn't allow himself a moment's pause to consider his actions; in the primal world of battle, dignity and appearance held no sway.

Did he miss it? Oh God, yes!

They were coming up alongside now, and he could just hear Grace's orders above the din.

"Fletcher! A shot across the bows! And for God's sake, don't hit below the rail!"

A shot across the bows—the international signal to heave to and surrender. James smirked; he more than half hoped the Spaniards would go down fighting.

There was a resounding boom, like a thunderclap, and splinters flew as the shot connected soundly with the fore rail of the Spanish ship. James cheered with the rest of the crew, but even gladly caught up in the mad oblivion of action, his tactical mind was clear. True, the _Glory_ was a slightly smaller ship, but her deck was teeming with some hundred or so wild-looking men and she was as well fit out as a fourth-rate. From what James' experienced eyes could tell, the Spanish had maybe twenty guns total and far fewer crewmen; her captain would be mad to strike back. As it was, the captain was not mad: the colors were hauled down, and the Spanish ship soon came to a stop. The boarding was swift and bloodless, one of the cleanest James had ever witnessed. Realizing they were almost laughably outnumbered, the Spaniards lay down their weapons and allowed themselves to be restrained. Their composure, however, did not at all mask their fury and indignation.

Grace stepped forward, and looking at her, James felt a sudden, fear-tinged nervousness. She did not appear angry, her expression was not unpleasant; it was simply blank, devoid of any emotion, and that was far worse.

"Search the ship," she ordered, and the half the men not restraining the Spanish crew scattered. Hands behind her back, she began to pace slowly back and forth in front of the row of prisoners. She halted before a striking, powerfully built man in a crimson doublet and gave him a thorough inspection.

" _Vostede é o capitán?_ she said; the man didn't answer.

James started, taken aback. Was that Spanish she was speaking? It would be advantageous for a privateer who took primarily Spanish merchants to know the language, but how on earth had she learned it well enough to speak it?

_Her parents must have been somewhat unpatriotic._

The Spaniard glared, his hands balling into fists. " _¡Hijo de puta!_ " he snarled, struggling against his captor. Grace's eyes narrowed. She pulled her pistol from her belt and pressed the barrel to the man's chest; James heard the distinct sound of the hammer clicking back.

" _Vostede é o capitán_ _?_ " she repeated.

" _Sí_ ," the man replied, loathing and rage boiling in that one syllable.

" _Ben_ ," Grace said with a congenial smile that did not reach her eyes, tucking her pistol back into its place; the smile did nothing to dispel James' sense of unease. " _Dime_ _, capitán,_ " she continued. " _O_ _nde está indo e onde veu_ _?_ "

Defiant, the Spaniard squared his shoulders and spat on the deck at Grace's feet. The atmosphere changed. The crewmen holding the Spanish glanced at each other with worried expressions and James unconsciously drew back. Though he hadn't understood a word of what had been said, one thing was apparent: the Spanish captain had made Grace mad—very mad.

With that same impassive expression, Grace stepped forward and struck the man hard across the face with the back of her fist.

" _¡Cabrón!_ _Eu non teño tempo para a súa insolencia!_ " she snarled, her voice biting and harsh like the crack of a whip. " _Dime o que quere e, posiblemente non matalo_."

"Captain!"

Grace tuned away from her prisoner and James followed her gaze.

"My God!" he breathed, a surge of protective rage washing over him.

Mr. Ames had come up from the hold, dragging along a terrified young woman. She looked to be about sixteen and was very pretty, even with her dirt-streaked face and eyes swollen and red from crying. Her clothes appeared intact, but that was no guarantee that she had not been inappropriately handled. After all, most of the crew were former pirates and all had been without a woman for over two months. It was harsh and disgustingly immoral and _wrong_ , but it was the reality. He'd never suffered such under his command, but this wasn't his command. James clenched his hands into white-knuckled fists—all he could do was watch.

_If they've done anything to her, so help me God, I'll kill them._

As Mr. Ames and his "find" came around the line of prisoners, the Spaniard gave an inarticulate bellow of rage and began fighting his bonds like a man possessed.

" _¡No! ¡Por favor, ella no! ¡No mi Elena, por favor!_ " The man collapsed to his knees, weeping.

Grace didn't even blink—she simply stared with those cold eyes of hers, weighing, calculating. James looked away, disgusted by her indifference. A sharp sob from the girl made him turn back; Grace had now applied her dispassionate scrutiny to the girl.

"Elena," he heard her murmur. " _Que bonito_ _…_ " she glanced at the Spaniard, still on his knees. " _É a súa filla, o capitán, non?_ "

Then, to James' horror, Grace pulled her pistol from her belt again and placed the barrel firmly under the young woman's chin. She needed no words.

The Spaniard rambled off some more liquid babble that must have included what Grace wanted to hear, because she smiled and tucked her pistol away. The man was hauled roughly to his feet and shoved in the direction of his own cabin.

"Lock the rest in the brig," Grace barked, and returned her attention to the girl, who was now past the point of tears. After a moment's pause, she snatched the girl by the hair and, much to James' surprise, flung her straight into his arms.

He caught her out of instinct, and she went limp, too drained from fear and crying to struggle as she had with Ames.

_My God, she's younger than I thought!_

She was so frail, so fragile; she couldn't be more than fourteen. He could feel her trembling—she was so frightened, so very frightened. She glanced up at him, and the look of absolute terror on her face cut him right to the core. What did she expect him to do to her? For that matter, what did _Grace_ expect him to do to her?

"Take her back to the ship," Grace instructed. "Stay with her in my cabin until Ames comes to fetch her."

James glowered at his captain, but those icy eyes, devoid of all feeling, unfathomable as the sea itself, gave him no answers. Stiffly, he took the girl by the arm and carried out his orders.

* * *

With an air of weary finality, Grace closed the log book and tucked her quill away in her desk, rubbing her temples. It had been a long—very long—day; necessary ruthlessness followed by hours of negotiating followed by hours of painstaking paperwork, recording everything taken from their prize, down to the last chicken egg, and to finish grandly, the official report.

She leaned over her desk, head in her hands, cringing and hissing through her teeth as the pressure of her forehead on her palms sent lancing pains down her forearms. It subsided quickly, only to be replaced by the dull, but insistent, ache in her wrists…and elbows…and shoulders…and hips…and…

_I despise the Atlantic._

Less than a fortnight from the Caribbean, and the nights were still frigid. It was well enough in the day with the sun beating down, warming the boards, but with the dark came the cold and with the cold came the pain. It varied in its intensity—more often than not, she could ignore it to the point that it was a constant thing, lurking just below her conscious thought. Then there were times it was so throbbing and all-encompassing that she would do anything just to dull it a little. Tonight it was the latter.

Grace growled under her breath as she pushed herself up from her chair, feeling the wrenching grind in her hip. She limped to the door and paused before she opened it, leaning heavily on the knob.

_How much more of this can I take?_

She sighed. Her days at sea were numbered, she knew, but at a mere twenty-eight years, coming up on twenty-nine, she realized, she should not have been considering giving up her chosen life. Still, she had been extremely fortunate and she thanked God with all her being for it. By all accounts, she should have died eight years ago, but she hadn't and now she was left with the consequences. She was sailing on borrowed time.

Grace took a deep breath, steeling herself against the pain and pushed the door open. She crossed the deck, intending to go down to the cargo hold, but stopped halfway there. James was up, as usual, leaning on the starboard rail, and if everything else was usual, he'd have a bottle of rum for company. Grace moved to stand beside him, making a concerted effort not to limp and leaned on the rail as well, mimicking his pose. He made no sign that he had noticed her presence, but sure enough, his right hand was clenched around the neck of a bottle.

"Do you mind if I order you to share that?" she asked, and the words felt strange, as if they didn't quite roll off her tongue right.

Wordlessly, James pushed the bottle towards her, without so much as glance in her direction. Grace took hold of it, but didn't drink, regarding him with a frown. She was accustomed to his laconic manner of conversation and snide despondence, but this open, obvious antagonism was rare, even for him.

"You're angry with me," Grace stated, suddenly hitting upon the problem. "Why?"

He looked at her then, and the intensity of his gaze took her by surprise.

"Why?" he said. "What you did today was…"

His mouth snapped shut and he jerked his gaze out to sea; apparently his anger had left him at a loss for words.

"I did my _duty_ today, James," Grace said wearily. "They were Spanish and I am a privateer for England—it was not piracy."

_It was not piracy._

"No. It was worse."

For a moment, Grace was bewildered—it was an odd thing for the most feared pirate hunter in the Caribbean to say there was something worse than piracy—but then she remembered his expression during the raid. She remembered the shock on his face when she'd handed the terrified Elena over to him and the look of sheer disgust in his eyes when he'd been given his orders.

"I assume this has something to do with Captain Prieto's daughter," she stated.

James spun full on to face her, incensed. He didn't shout, but his voice shook with the effort of suppressing the urge to do just that.

"You _exploited_ her!" he spat. "Used her as a _bargaining piece_! She was a _child_ and you put a pistol to her throat while her father wept! He wept _on his knees_ and you used that. I saw your eyes, _Captain_. You felt nothing!"

She could have ordered him to be silent and reminded him who gave the orders, she could have had the hide whipped from his back for his contempt, she could have done a dozen things, but he had struck deep and didn't know it.

_E eu xuro por Deus, I'll let him know!_

"I did what was necessary to achieve my aims," Grace hissed, forming her words as precisely as she could through the haze of her anger. " _That_ is called pragmatism."

"Pragmatism?" James bit back with a cold laugh. "Where does your pragmatism end and cruelty begin?"

It was an accusation—an accusation that plunged far too close to her own thoughts and Grace struck back.

"And you would have treated them differently would you, _Navy_ man?" she snarled, her voice still not above speaking level, but all the more venomous for it. "How many men like that captain have you killed? How many fathers haven't come home because of you?"

_And how many because of me?_

Grace was expecting a retort, she was expecting rage as they stared at each other. She was _not_ expecting James' face to soften and the anger to be replaced so swiftly by such profound devastation and self-loathing. And she certainly had not expected the half strangled sound—almost like a sob—that wrenched from his throat as he turned away.

"Forgive me," she said, surprised to hear the strain in her own voice. "I shouldn't have spoken so harshly."

James sighed, his head bowed. "I can't fault you for speaking the truth. I deserve your harsh words, Captain."

"As do I."

He looked up at that rather peculiar statement, his brow drawn in thought. Neither spoke, but an understanding passed between them—a recognition of sorts that needed no discussion.

"You didn't really resign, did you?" Grace asked suddenly. Seeing the unmasked grief in his eyes, she added, "I won't ask why."

"No, I did, but was hardly voluntary," James answered with a bitter smile. "Truth be told, I didn't give a damn what happened to me." He smirked in that singular way of his, and it gave him a slight appearance of madness. "And I still don't."

So he _had_ been court-martialed; she'd thought as much. But the triumph of having her suspicions confirmed was deadened by the despair in James' voice.

"Did you even present a case for yourself?" Grace asked.

James' laugh surprised her. It was deep, but sounded sharp and so bitter she could almost taste it. It gave the sense that he was laughing at himself, and only at himself, because nothing but the irony of his sorry state amused him anymore. It sent an unexpected chill down her spine.

"Misfortune is my lot, Captain," he said. "Whatever hardship befalls me is the very least of what I deserve."

Unable to think of an adequate response to such a weighty statement, Grace looked away. A sudden twinge in her left shoulder reminded her of why she had a bottle of rum in her hand, and she took a fast, rather copious swallow, surprised to find the bottle mostly full. The harsh liquor burned her throat, the sensation magnified by the fact that she swallowed quickly.

" _Porra_ _!_ " she swore through a fit of violent coughing.

"If you dislike the stuff so much, why drink it?" James asked.

"I could ask the same of you," Grace answered once the coughing had subsided, her voice hoarse. She took another swallow, and though it went down more smoothly, she still grimaced. "It serves its purpose. Laudanum is hard to come by, and when we do come by it it's best to keep it for when it's truly needed."

"Ah," James said. "Is it this?" He lightly ran a finger along her left hand where a wide, sloppy scar stretched from the base of her forefinger to her wrist. "You favor your left arm, I've noticed."

_He's an observant fellow when sober._

Grace flexed her hand, feeling the stiffness and pain the simple motion caused.

"No," she said, mournfully. "This happened before I was captain…a piece of broken spar during a storm. No, the real problem is here." She tapped her left shoulder. "I was shot by a Frenchman. The surgeon got the bullet out, but infection set in. I had a raging fever for weeks, and it left me with worse joints than an old man."

"And the crew knows this?"

"Ames knows, but for the rest, if they knew, they're forgotten; it's been eight years."

"Eight years!" James said, incredulous. "Eight years and no one's noticed?"

Grace choked down another mouthful of the vile, saccharine liquid and shrugged. "Did your men ever notice so much about you?" she asked. "So long as you lead them well, what reason do they have to look closer than your rank? You become a god to them, and no one dares look closely at a god."

"I know," James said. "Oh, God, how well I know." His voice wavered.

Grace found herself unable to do anything but stare, enraptured. The raw pain on his face, the sadness, the hatred all turned inward on himself—it made her ache to hold him, comfort him, love him, cry for him since it was clear that tears were not a release he would allow himself. Desire hit her then, hard and sudden like a kick in the gut. She took a slow, steady breath but couldn't shake the feeling or still her suddenly racing heart.

He was a handsome man, disheveled drunk though he was, and while Grace had been far from blind to the fact, she had not been drawn to him until this moment. Looking at him now, she was struck by a sense of beautiful tragedy. She had been lucky enough never to have met him in his glory days—her sort who made the acquaintance of the Scourge never returned to bear witness—but the broken man beside her, his shoulders bowed with grief, was so unlike any vague suspicion she'd ever heard. He was an unchecked whirlwind of emotion, and that chaos drew her. She wanted him, she realized, and wanted him with a dangerous fervor.

_Ai, calme-se!_

Grace took another sip, although she knew it wouldn't help steady her mind any. The intensity of her reaction didn't surprise her greatly; after all, she'd not taken a lover in eight years.

_Nine, soon._

It was a jolting reminder. They would make St. Kitts in four days; she needed to be prepared. Grace sighed and slid the bottle back across the rail.

"Thank you," she said. James took the bottle, his head still bowed.

"Did it help any?" he asked, and the almost child-like sincerity of his voice tugged at Grace's heartstrings.

"For now," she answered and was suddenly breathless when a melancholy, but beautifully genuine smile quirked at his mouth.

"Good," he said, barely above a whisper. He looked at her with a sigh, brows drawn. "You should sleep, Captain."

"As should you," Grace replied. "But I've still…something to see to."

James nodded and Grace moved away from the rail with much more ease than she'd had coming. A sudden thought made her turn back.

"I saw her before we boarded," she said. "Elena. I sent Richard to find her because of all my men he is the one I trust not to lay any wrong hand on a woman. And I gave her into your care because I trust you to be the same."

"How could you possibly have known that?" James asked.

_Your reputation preceeds you, Commodore._

Grace smiled a little. She couldn't tell him, of course. She couldn't explain that the Scourge was known for more than hangings, and how among the sparse sisterhood of female crew and captains they all prayed it would be him to catch them, if they must be caught at all. Sure as the sun rising the Commodore would hang you, but he'd not rough treat you first and that was something.

"A woman in this life gets to be a quick and good judge of a man," she said, and that was an equal truth.

_And quicker with a knife when she's wrong._

"And you judge me a good one, is that it?" James said.

"Better than most," she said. His hands were clasped loosely around the rum bottle, and Grace lay one hand on his. "Go easy with this, James. Whatever it is you're drowning, this won't do it forever."

He drew a shuddering breath and closed his eyes, turning his head away—a refusal.

_Oh, you fool._

Grace sighed, and with a murmured "Good night", returned to her cabin.

She didn't hear James' tearful laugh or see him fling the bottle into the black waves below.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Translations: 
> 
> "Vostede é o capitán?"—"Are you the captain?"
> 
> "¡Hijo de puta!"—"Son of a bitch!" (lit. 'son of a whore')
> 
> "Sí,"—"Yes"
> 
> "Ben ... Dime, capitán, onde está indo e onde veu?" –"Good. Tell me, captain, where are you from and where are you going?
> 
> "¡Cabrón! Eu non teño tempo para a súa insolencia! Dime o que quere e, posiblemente non matalo."—"Bastard! I don't have time for insolence. Tell me what I want and maybe I won't kill you." (¡Cabrón! is actually more of a connotation than a meaning. It's meant to describe a man who is too weak to stop his wife from cheating on him.)
> 
> "¡No! ¡Por favor, ella no! ¡No mi Elena, por favor! "—"No! Please not her! Not my Elena, please!"
> 
> "Elena, Que bonito… É a súa filla, o capitán, non?"—"Elena…how pretty. She's your daughter, isn't she?"
> 
> E eu xuro por Deus—And I swear to God
> 
> "Porra!"—Damn it!
> 
> Ai, calme-se! —Calm down/Relax


	4. Careen at St. Kitts

In the five days it took to reach St. Kitts, James saw more of the captain than he had on the whole three month voyage. Their conversations became a nightly occurrence and she often stood watch with him or sought him out to discuss tactics. An unspoken agreement had manifested between them that so long as he didn’t ask about her past, she wouldn’t press him about his; James was grateful for that as well as the company. The concern she had shown for him the night after the raid had been so surprising he hadn’t been sure how to react; after all, it had been so long since anyone had given him a second thought. It meant something to him—what, he couldn’t say—but it was something, and he owed her thanks for it. The words, though, stuck in his throat like sand, and so he thought it best to let his actions speak for him. For nearly four days, not a drop of rum passed his lips. He ignored his appalling thirst and suddenly shaky hands as best he could, all the while refusing to acknowledge what he knew it meant. His crewmates knew it as well, though they never spoke of it openly, and not even Cromley would broach the subject within James’ earshot. They simply shook their heads in a pitying sort of way, watching him grow more agitated and sleepless as the agonizing hours of each day wore on, and waited for him to fail.  
  
And fail he did. However much James thought he could combat the physical need, he was no match for his conscience. True, his body ached for the touch of alcohol, but his mind craved the numbness it brought him. It was a nightmare that finally broke him, one that had since become a regular torment. In it, he had slaughtered his men one by one in the most gruesome ways a soldier’s imagination could invent, Elizabeth clinging to him with dead hands, murmuring in his ear, “One more, James. Kill one more and I’ll love you”. He had woken in a cold sweat, utterly shaken, unable to think. He’d made his way to the hold where, he assumed, he had proceeded to drink himself into unconsciousness. When he came to the next morning, he had found himself back in the forecastle, under his hammock with his worst hangover to date and almost no memory of what had occurred. His failure disgusted him, but, as horrid as it was, his life was easier to bear when he was drunk—when it took all his concentration just to stay on his feet, he didn’t have a thought to spare for the dead.   
  
Now, pushing his way through the crowded avenues of St. Kitts, James tried his best to force such thoughts to the back of his mind. The _Glory_ had docked that morning, and he had been more that glad to get away. He hefted the small leather pouch in his hand, his cut of the bounty paid for the Spanish ship and her cargo. It wasn’t a fortune, not even a small one, but it was enough to buy him room and board at a decent inn for a week or two, which was what he wanted. After receiving some strange looks from his crewmates when he’d turned down their offers to accompany them “on their rounds” at the bawdy houses, Cromley had finally recommended him to a decent place that didn’t hold with procuring its serving women.   
  
James halted in front of a simple, three-story building whose carved wooden sign bore an elegantly drawn compass rose and below it the legend _The Star and Compass_. It looked respectable enough, but it wasn’t so far from the docks that a grungy sailor would seem out of place. According to Cromley, the place regularly put up men from the Glory, and the proprietor, a Scotsman by the name of George Hunter, was an honest fellow who charged a reasonable price.   
  
He was surprised when he stepped inside at how calm and quiet it all was. The common was far from empty, but there was no grating music, no brawling, and no garishly painted women hawking their services, just the low rumble of conversation. His fears that he would be forced to repeat Minorca vanished. His worn uniform earned him a few curious stares as he crossed the room and he sighed resignedly. There was nothing he could do about that—they were the only clothes he had. At least he’d had enough sense to leave his hat and decrepit wig on the ship.   
  
The woman at the counter, though, spared no glance for his appearance. She was a pleasant looking woman with a broad forehead and a kind set to her mouth. Her brown hair, greying slightly at the temples, was swept up into a messy bun at the nape of her neck and her dress, while simple, was of a good cloth; clearly business was well enough to make ends meet and a little more. The woman, whom he assumed to be the innkeeper’s wife, looked up from her work as he approached and smiled.   
  
“Good day to you, sir,” she said in a thick, Scottish brogue. “What might I be able to do for you?”  
  
“Room and board for two weeks, ma’am, if you’re able,” James said.   
  
“That we are, sir. Make your mark here, if you please,” the woman replied, turning the logbook toward him. He took the quill and hastily scrawled “Adams” onto the page. It would never do to use his real name—he was fairly certain no one would make the connection between the slovenly “Mr. Adams” and Commodore James Adam Norrington.  
  
 _Former Commodore._  
  
“Now then, Mr. Adams,” the woman said. “Shall I show you to your room or would you like a bite to eat first?”  
  
“I’ll eat first, ma’am. Whatever you’re serving.”  
  
Mrs. Hunter laughed. “I should have known. That’s what all you sea-farin’ sort want. We get some in here what haven’t had a hot meal in over a year, poor souls. You’re just come into port, I take it?”  
  
“Yes, ma’am. On the _Glory_ ,” James answered.  
  
“I’m glad to hear it!” Mrs. Hunter exclaimed. “The _Glory_ ’s been missed these past months. Edward Grace is a good, honest man. We’re always glad to have men of his here.”  
  
James managed a smile, but it felt forced and cold and no doubt looked it. If Mrs. Hunter noticed she gave no sign, for which he was thankful.   
  
“Sit down, then, and I’ll have something for you in a moment,” she said, closing the logbook. She disappeared into the kitchen and James turned from the counter to find a seat. He moved automatically for the back of the room where, he hoped, he would receive fewer curious looks. He threw himself down on one of the long benches near the wall and sighed, pinching the bridge of his nose. Any moment now it would start; the whispers, the furtive glances…  
  
 _“Lord, what’s a Navy man doin’ here?”_  
  
 _“Ah, he’s no Navy man.”_  
  
 _“Sure he is. Lookit his fancy threads.”_  
  
 _“Well, ‘e coulda stolen ‘em couldn’e?”_  
  
 _“By Gaw, that’s true. Is ‘e a pirate, then ye reckon?”_  
  
“You’re a sailor.”  
  
The young voice jerked him out of his sardonic imaginings and James looked down to see a boy seated beside him on the bench.  
  
“Beg pardon?” James said.  
  
“You’re a sailor,” the boy repeated. Judging by the lilt in his speech, he was the innkeepers’ son. “Me Da taught me how to know ‘em.”  
  
“Is that so?” James replied, feeling his mood lighten in spite of himself. “And how might that be?”  
  
The boy ran a hand through his black-brown hair, tugging at the curls that flopped over his forehead. “You walk like you think the ground’s s’posed to move.”   
  
A smile tugged at James’ mouth. “Your father’s a sharp man,” he said.   
  
“He is, that,” the boy said. He paused for a moment, then went on in an excited rush. “It’s my birthday next week, you know. I’ll be nine.”   
  
“Nine?” James replied. “Getting on in years, aren’t you?”  
  
The boy smiled, all innocent excitement and James sighed.  
  
 _God, what I would give to be a child again._  
  
To be free of guilt, free of any worries beyond who would play the pirate in tomorrow’s game. With a sarcastic chuckle, he recalled how he’d always played the pirate in such games. The world was a cruelly ironic place.  
  
“Is it good to be on the sea?” the boy asked suddenly.  
  
“Yes,” James answered. “Better than most things.” It was true. He had always felt awkward on land in a way that had nothing to do with how he walked. The sea was in his blood, he knew that; was that why it felt so good to be sailing without the press of duty?  
  
“Well, that’s good!” the boy went on. “I want to go to sea someday.” His dark eyes shone with enthusiasm. “My Da says I can join the Navy when I turn twelve!”  
  
It was as if someone had shoved ice through his heart.  
  
“What’s your name, boy?” James asked, his throat tight.  
  
“Benjamin Hunter,” the boy piped.  
  
“Benjamin,” he murmured. He looked at the boy, so optimistic, full of dreams, staring up at him with wide, hopeful eyes. “I hope to God you have better luck than I.”   
  
“Benjamin! Get out from there!” Mrs. Hunter exclaimed as she approached with a plate laden with food. “Let Mr. Adams be.”  
  
Benjamin slid off the bench and scurried away without a word.  
  
“I hope he wasn’t bothering you much,” Mrs. Hunter said. “He’s a curious rascal.”  
  
“Not at all,” James said absently. “He seems like a bright boy.”  
  
“Aye, he is. And crafty, too. But never mind that. You just get to work on that plate,” she said, and bustled away.   
  
James hung his head; he suddenly wasn’t at all hungry. The way Benjamin had looked at him, that glow of admiration…  
  
 _I don’t deserve that._   
  
He had a sudden, familiar desire for a bottle of rum—several bottles of rum. He forced the thought out of his head the moment it entered. He could not, would not, get drunk here. True, he had failed before, but Benjamin, he could tell, was going to be a powerful deterrent.

* * *

  
  
  
The study was as contradictory as it had always been, a rustic shambles incongruous with the proper opulence of the rest of the mansion, but as the most private room in the house, it was allowed to be unfashionable. No servants ever entered here, nor did any visiting dignitaries: the governor permitted only his family and closest friends in this room. Grace smiled as she took in the merry disarray of dusty books and mismatched chairs. She had so many fond memories of this room; studying and struggling with her lessons, countless hours being tutored by her uncle, who had trusted no one else with her education.  
  
Grace turned, setting her glass on the table as she heard the door open. Her uncle entered and, closing the door swiftly behind him, turned to her with a smile.   
  
“There you are, my girl!” he said with a laugh as she embraced him. “You look well, Grace. Lord, but it’s still strange to call you that. And those clothes!”  
  
“All necessary, Uncle, you know that,” Grace said, picking up her glass and taking a seat in one of the armchairs. “I couldn’t very well come as myself when I’m purported to be living in Boston.”  
  
“No, indeed,” her uncle chuckled, pouring himself a glass of brandy. “Now,” he said once he was seated. “Let us discuss this Spanish galleon sitting in my harbour.”   
  
Grace grinned. She had been bringing prizes into St. Kitts for nearly nine years, ever since she’s convinced her uncle to commission her as a privateer. His standing as a royally appointed governor had been a blessing to her all her life, but the Letters of Marque had made her doubly thankful. Yet, while it made her secondary profession logistically easier, it also made it a tad morally disquieting.   
  
_But I sleep at night, so it’s well enough._  
  
“It’s clear you brought her in,” the governor continued. “Yours tend to be missing the same sections of the taffrail each time. I don’t know how you manage it.’  
  
“You have John Fletcher to thank for that, Uncle Thomas,” Grace said. “The man’s a superb gunner. I pray I never lose him.”   
  
“Oh, I doubt you will,” Thomas said. “But tell me, what the Devil did you do with the Spaniards this time?”  
  
Grace stared down into her brandy with a sigh. “There’s no ransom to be had from a merchant man and his daughter. We weren’t far off from Spanish water as it was. We came as close as we could to the Florida coast and set them out in longboats with enough supplies for a month. More, if they’re cunning with the rations.”   
  
“It was a good move, Grace,” her uncle replied. “But you seem displeased with it.”  
  
She swirled the brandy in her glass, not looking up. “It’s…hard, Uncle,” she said. “When there are women on the ships I take. I know my men wouldn’t be fool enough to harm them—I’d have them dancing from the yardarm in a trice, and they know that—but the women…God, some of them are barely more than girls! The fear I see on their faces…it's a hard thing, to see it and say nothing.”   
  
“It’s a quandary you knew you’d have to face.”  
  
“Yes,” Grace sighed.  
  
 _But that doesn’t make the facing it any easier._  
  
“My dear, this self-doubting despair does not suit you,” Thomas said, suddenly cheerful. “This may lift your spirits.”   
  
Grace hardly had time to ponder his words when the door burst open, revealing a lanky, sandy-haired man in fine clothes, a roguish smile on his face.  
  
“Isaac!” Grace exclaimed, nearly dropping her glass. “What on earth are you doing here?”  
  
With a hearty laugh—no doubt at her expression of shock, Grace thought—Isaac Braddock swept into the room, closing the door behind him with a flourish.   
  
“Well, dear cousin, I’ve been called away from Boston on business and I thought I’d visit home and my old haunts,” he said, hugging her tight before settling into a chair with the easy grace of confidence. Grace smirked into her brandy; “old haunts” for Isaac meant rowdy taverns, bawdy houses, and the bedrooms of at least two wealthy, young widows—he was a proper rake, her cousin.   
  
“How long have you been here?” Grace asked.  
  
“Ages, it seems,” Isaac replied. “Constant sailing almost, from here to the Carolina colony, to Nassau, to Port Royal, back to bloody Carolina and back to here…six months or so now. I’m glad to have caught you in port. You’ve been gone eight months, I hear.”   
  
“Yes,” Grace said. “Mostly around the coast of Spain, trying to catch an outgoing merchant or two, and a bit around the Mediterranean. Nothing much of note, really.” She paused, frowning. “Except for a sudden storm near Tripoli of all places, or so I heard, and a bad one.”   
  
“Thank God we’ve had none of that here yet this year,” the governor said.   
  
“No weather storms, but plenty of the political persuasion,” Isaac said. “You’ve come back at a tumultuous time, cousin. As usual.”  
  
Grace sat up straighter. “Has something happened?”  
  
“I should say it has!” her uncle exclaimed. “Piracy is on a sudden rise, these past four months. I know you don’t like to go for pirates, Grace, but you may have to.”   
  
“But surely the Navy…” Grace began, then froze.  
  
James Norrington, the Scourge of Piracy, whose very name made the most hardened cutthroats quake with fear was on her ship, thoroughly beaten down and broken. The Naval forces in the Caribbean had never been large, despite please to the crown for more resources.  Without James’ leadership and no-quarter reputation to precede them, the Navy would be all but powerless.  
  
“The Navy?” Thomas scoffed, taking her pause for confusion. “The Navy hasn’t been able to do a damn thing since Commodore Norrington vanished half a year ago.”  
  
Grace schooled her features, feigning surprise. “Vanished? What do you mean vanished?”  
  
“Just that,” Isaac said. “He took off after some pirate nearly seven months past, and no one’s seen hide nor hair of him since.”   
  
_That would be because I have him…Lord, but he could have me any day!_  
  
She felt her face flush and ducked her head, hoping to hide it. It was hard to admit, but just the thought of his wild, green eyes and devil-may-care grin set her blood boiling. His voice alone—that rich timbre that played so deliciously along her spine—was enough to make her want to—  
  
Grace froze that line of thought before it could go any further. It wouldn’t do to let her imagination run away with itself. It wasn’t like her to be so distracted, and especially not over some man. The conversation around her faded as her mind wandered, despite her attempts to stay focused.  The truth of the matter was that James had her well and truly infatuated with him and it had been so long since her last romantic foray that she had quite forgotten how to handle it. It was bewildering—after that initial surge of desire, her feelings should have faded, not amplified, especially after coming upon him nearly comatose in the cargo hold. Had it been any other of her crew she would have been livid, but with James…she just hadn’t been. The way he had looked at her that night, so sad and resigned to his broken existence, had sliced through any anger she may have felt and struck at that place in her heart that the sea hadn’t managed to harden. She’d taken pity on him despite herself and helped him back to the forecastle—no mean feat considering his height—where he’d tumbled to the deck under his hammock, very nearly taking her down with him.  He had waved her off with a slurred “No, let me lie,” when she’d knelt down to help him up, but he’d caught hold of her hand as she made to rise.   
  
“I’m sorry,” he’d said. “I didn’t want…I tried.”   
  
“I know,” she had told him, and she had allowed herself to touch him, to stroke his hair away from his face. It had seemed to soothe him. “Just get some sleep, James.”  
  
He had released her hand and closed his eyes, a strange, half-smile on his face. “Yes,” he had murmured to himself. “…very pretty with her hair down.”   
  
Foolish as it was, Grace couldn’t help but wonder if he’d meant her. She knew it had probably just been the rum talking and odds were he didn’t even remember saying it, but…  
  
“…I certainly hope so. He’s been a thorn in our side for years, has Jack Sparrow.”  
  
Grace’s head snapped up, her mind jerked back to the present; if anything could focus her, it was that.   
  
“What about Jack Sparrow?” she asked, her hand tight around her now empty glass.  
  
“You haven’t been listening at all,” Isaac said, and it was clear he found that odd. “He’s the pirate Norrington’s gone off after.” He paused. “You don’t…know him, do you?”  
  
“Unfortunately,” Grace said, sneering. “What has he done this time?”   
  
_Arrogant bastard! If I ever get my hands on him…_  
  
“It’s been Hell to piece together, but from what I can tell, the lucky rascal escaped his own hanging under some very suspect circumstances,” Isaac explained. “Apparently the local blacksmith was involved and now he’s set to marry the governor’s daughter or some such nonsense—the blacksmith, I mean, not Sparrow. But it seems—and this is what’s most unusual about it all—that Norrington let the man go!”  
  
Grace arched an eyebrow. “The Scourge let a man go?”

_Of course it would be Jack who managed it._  
  
“I was as shocked as you,” Isaac continued. “That’s the business I was sent down for. The Company wants this mess sorted out. I’m afraid most of what I have is hearsay, but my report’s been sent.” Isaac sighed and rubbed his chin. “Still, hearsay or no, it’s enough to justify arrest.”  
  
“How likely is it?” Thomas asked.  
  
“I might as well arrest the blacksmith tomorrow,” Isaac sighed. “And Norrington, wherever he is, should consider himself a fugitive. Commodore or no, his neck is for the noose, as well.”  
  
Grace tried to hid her unease, tapping her glass on the arm of the chair. Isaac was dreadfully loyal to his family, loyal to the point of breaking the law—he’d done it for her more times than she could count—but if it didn’t involve his kin, he was the Company’s man through and through. If he found out about James, she didn’t think any amount of pleading could silence him.   
  
“Isaac, why would the Company send you to sort this out?” Grace asked. “This wouldn’t have anything to do with that business maneuver you mentioned in your letter, would it?”  
  
“Business maneuver?” Thomas said, regarding his son quizzically. “What might that be? You’ve not spoken of it.”  
  
Isaac shifted in his chair, stretching his long legs out in front of him. “That, Father,” he said, sounding highly irritated. “Is because I am entirely skeptical about the whole mad scheme.”   
  
“And what mad scheme would that be?” Grace asked.  
  
“Some plan of Cutler’s to increase trade on a massive scale,” Isaac answered with a dismissive wave of his hand. “It’s impossible.”  
  
Thomas laughed. “Ah, yes, how is your friend Mr. Beckett?”  
  
“He’s a lord now, actually, as he’d tell you if he were present,” Isaac replied with an air of amusement. “And he’s reveling in it.” He sighed, shaking his head. “He’s a fine gentleman, but too ambitious by far, I’ve always thought. I fear sometimes the man won’t stop until he’s Glamis, Cawdor, and King.”   
  
“A gloomy comparison,” Grace said, but for all it’s dark connotations, it was an apt description. She had only met him once, and while he had liked him well enough, the meeting had left no doubt in her mind that Cutler Beckett lived for business. “He’s not changed at all, it seems.”  
  
“No,” Isaac said, suddenly serious. “No, he hasn’t.”  
  
“Ah!” the governor exclaimed, looking at his pocket watch. “Nearly three…forgive me, Grace, Isaac, but I must be off.” He stood and hurried to the door where he paused and looked back with a grin. “Grace, my dear, be sure my rogue of a son doesn’t drink all my brandy, will you?”  
  
The door clicked shut behind him and the moment it was closed Isaac nearly leapt out of his chair.   
  
“My letter,” he said. “You received my letter?”  
  
“Yes, thank God!” Grace said. “It was nearly too late! The Company has got hold of one of my merchants. I’m sure of it.”   
  
Isaac swore, running a hand over his face. “What did you do with your cargo?”  
  
“I recorded it in the prize report and had it all transferred to the Spanish ship. It was mostly wine and some textiles…none of the usual this time.”  
  
“And the crew didn’t question it?” Isaac asked.   
  
Grace resisted the urge to roll her eyes and groan; she would have thought that by now Isaac would have spent enough time at sea to know a few things.  
  
“I’m captain, Isaac,” she said. “If my men question my orders, I can have them whipped for as long as I please. Besides, they don’t wonder where their coin comes from so long as they get it before the brothels open.”  
  
“Fine, fine,” Isaac said, standing. “What really matters is that you aren’t caught with cargo you shouldn’t have.”   
  
“And the merchant?” Grace pressed. “I can’t ignore him, Isaac. He knows things.”  
  
Her cousin turned to look at her, his eyes worried. “How much?”  
  
“Enough to bring everything crashing down,” Grace admitted. “He’s seen me return to the _Glory_ , and that’s enough to assume a connection, though I doubt he suspects Isabel and Edward to be the same person. Still, pressed as he is, he’s sure to mention it.”  
  
“Which merchant is this?” Isaac asked.   
  
“Henry Skinner from—”  
  
“From Charleston,” Isaac broke in. His posture relaxed and he smiled weakly. “I have charge of his case. I can help you out of this.”   
  
Grace sighed, letting her head fall back against the chair. “You know what I have to do, Isaac,” she said, and even to her own ears her voice was anxious.   
  
There was a quiet moment as they both contemplated her meaning. Grace had killed her share of men over the years, for various reasons. She didn’t like it, but she could do it though she paid a heavy price for it later.  
  
“I can keep the Company men away, but you need a suitable place for it,” Isaac said at last. “A tavern would be best, the worst you can find. Do you know any?”  
  
“No,” Grace said, leaning forward, her elbows on her knees. “I’m unfamiliar with Port Royal, but I know someone who might know a place.”  
  
It was a long shot, really. She didn’t expect James to know much about the seedier side of Port Royal, but he would at least be able to tell her the respectable places, the places to avoid. And she needed to see him—if there was soon to be a price on his head, it was only right he be warned.  
  
“I’d best go,” she said, standing. “It could take some time to find him.”  
  
Isaac nodded, then pulled her into a tight embrace.   
  
“I wouldn’t want your life for the world, cousin,” he said. “You never have a day of peace, it seems. Are you sure you aren’t ready to come to Boston in truth? You would get on so well with Anna.”  
  
Grace sighed, thinking of the countless cold nights spent in misery and her dream—her foolish, little girl’s dream that she just couldn’t forget—that one day she would have a home, a husband…and children. The thought was more painful than any cold night.   
  
“Not yet,” she said with a slight smile. “Boston isn’t ready.”   
  
“No, I suppose not,” Isaac chuckled, releasing her. “Good luck finding your friend.”  
  
She nodded and turned towards to door, her mind already occupied with other things. She would have to go down to the docks, and probably the _Mad Fiddler_ , before she even hoped to begin searching for James; if anyone knew where he might have gone, Cromley would.  
  
“Grace?” Isaac said suddenly, and she paused, looking back at him. He was leaning against a chair and frowning in the way he did when he was uncomfortable and trying not to show it. “Do you know anything about…about Davy Jones?”

" _Santa Nai_!" Grace exclaimed and her hand flew to her chest, where her mother's necklace was tucked beneath her shirt. She would have pulled it out and kissed it if she could. "What are you at, naming him like that?"

"I'm sorry, I just...what do you know?"  
  
“As much as any sailor,” Grace said, confused at the strangeness of his question and the troubled tone of his voice. “Why do you ask?”  
  
“Is he real, do you think?” Isaac pressed, and now his unease was apparent. “A man without a heart—in the most literal sense—it can’t be possible.”   
  
“ _Eu non creo nas bruxas, pero habel-as hainas_ ,” Grace muttered.

"The King's English, cousin. Please?" Isaac said.

“All sailors fear the sight of the _Flying Dutchman_ , Isaac," she said. "And rightly so.”

  
“Are you saying it’s real?” Isaac queried and there was something almost frantic in his tone now. “The Kraken and the Dead Man’s Chest? One hundred years of service, all of it?”   
  
“Isaac, what’s this about?” Grace asked. “You’ve never given any credence to these things before.”  
  
He smiled and shook his head, all traces of fear gone. “It’s nothing,” he said. “I just find myself more inclined to believe in things lately. Go on…I didn’t mean to keep you.”  
  
Grace didn’t consider that a satisfactory answer, but she left the room all the same—there was no use trying to ferret out the reason behind her cousin’s unusual questions. There was a reason, of that she was sure, but she had more pressing matters to attend to than Isaac’s newfound superstition.  
  


**Notes for the Chapter:**

> "Eu non creo nas bruxas, pero habel-as hainas": I don't believe in witches, but they exist.


	5. No Quarter Given

It was the knocking that woke him. He sat up, blinking owlishly in the afternoon light and groaned. He’d gone to bed in his boots again, it seemed, but he felt marginally well all things considered.  
  
The knocking continued.  
  
“I’m coming, damn your eyes!” James growled as he stumbled out of bed, shaking the fog of exhaustion from his thoughts. He hadn’t been sleeping much over the past nights, and what rest he did manage to steal now and then wasn’t exactly restful. He wrenched the door open and started at the sight of a lovely, if timid looking, young woman in a pale pink dress. Her head, covered with a plain, linen cap, was bowed and she stared rather fixedly at the package in her arms. James opened his mouth to ask her purpose in his doorway, but she looked up and the words froze on his tongue.   
  
It was Grace, but it was not. She looked soft and female and…pretty. He berated himself for the thought, but there was no denying it—his captain was decidedly easy on the eyes.  
  
 _And no rum to blame it on this time._  
  
“Going to let me in or must I wait until you are through appraising my figure?” she asked, sounding highly amused.  
  
James glowered, mostly to hide his embarrassment, and stepped back to let her pass. Was it his imagination or had her smirk been a bit too sly? Grace set her package on the table and turned to look at him, removing her cap.  
  
“You look…sober, James,” she said, smiling.  
  
He laughed—a short, derisive bark—slouching against the wall, arms crossed. “For the time being.”  
  
It was a truthful, if bitterly sarcastic, response. He still drank at night, though never at the _Star and Compass_ and only enough to make him a bit unsteady. He was glad she had noticed, though. It was important that she knew he was trying. She seemed to have some genuine concern for him, at least a little, and it felt good to think that, just maybe, someone gave a damn. It felt good to know that lovely smile had been for him.  
  
 _Christ, man! Waxing maudlin when sober, now, are you?_  
  
“I assume there’s some reason for this visit, Captain?” he asked.  
  
“There is, indeed,” Grace said, taking a seat at the table. “Several reasons, really. Come sit down, James.”  
  
Just as he made to move towards the table, a young voice called from outside in the hall.  
  
“Ah…Mr. Adams?” he heard Ben say. “I was told to bring this tea up for your cousin, if she wants it, but if I open the door I’ll drop it.”   
  
“Well,” James said with a slight smile. “Would you care for a cup of tea, cousin?” He raised his eyebrows at her.  
  
“Well I had to tell them something appropriate!” she said, seeming suddenly flustered. “I might as well have some tea. He took all the trouble to bring it up.”  
  
James turned and opened the door once again. Ben inched into the room, both hands clasping a saucer with the teacup balanced somewhat precariously on top. He moved with slow, small steps, hardly seeming to breathe, his face set in a comical scowl of concentration until the saucer and cup were placed safely on the table.   
  
“There you are, Miss!” he said, grinning. “I didn’t spill a drop, did I?”  
  
“No, you did very well,” Grace said and there was something in her voice that James had never heard before. It was gentle, and he could have sworn it trembled just a little.   
  
“Mr. Adams! I’ve been meaning to show you!” Ben exclaimed suddenly, darting to the other side of the table as James sat down. Reaching into his pocket, he pulled out a compass, of all things, and flipped it open. “When you have a moment, would you teach me what all these numbers mean?”  
  
 _I’m not the best person to ask about navigation._  
  
James pushed the guilty thought aside and managed a smile for the boy’s sake.   
  
“Tomorrow, perhaps,” he said. “May I see it?”  
  
Benjamin eagerly handed him the compass and scurried around behind him to look over his shoulder.   
  
“Does it work proper, Mr. Adams?” he asked.  
  
“It’s in perfect order,” James answered, snapping it shut and placing it in Ben’s hands. “And quite good quality. Where did you get it?”  
  
“It was a birthday gift,” Benjamin proclaimed proudly. “My Ma said it came last week, but she didn’t give it to me until last night.” He glanced at Grace, grinning broadly. “It was my birthday yesterday, you see. I’m nine, now!”   
  
“Nine? Really?” Grace said, picking up her tea. “Congratulations. I turn twenty-nine myself in a few weeks.”  
  
“Who sent it to you, Ben?” James asked. A compass was an odd gift for an innkeeper’s son, his interest in the sea notwithstanding.   
  
 “My uncle," Benjamin said. "Least, Ma says that's what he is. I’ve never met him. He never signs his letters, neither.”   
  
He stared at the compass happily for a moment, before tucking it back in his pocket.  “I’ll be off now,” he said, and turned to Grace with a smile. “I hope you enjoy your tea, miss, and have a very nice birthday of your own!”   
  
Grace only smiled in response, a strangely sad smile, James noticed. Her behaviour since Ben’s arrival had been unusual—it wasn’t like her to be so demure, but he suspected it was nothing more than an act. She was in disguise, after all.   
  
_But why the sadness?_  
  
“He seems fond of you,” she said once Ben had gone.   
  
“I can’t think why,” James said, and truly he couldn’t think why. What could the boy possibly see in him? The drink-addled wreck of a Navy officer was no one for a young boy to admire.   
  
Grace snorted derisively. “You discredit yourself. Now, before you snap a self-deprecating retort at me for that, my reason for being her is actually very important.”  
  
The bashful, girlish demeanor was gone—this was the Grace he was used to. She looked like a fetching housemaid, yes, but skirts did not undermine her authority and the opposition of image and reality was an intriguing one.   
  
James smirked at the thought and leaned back in his chair, gesturing for her to continue.   
  
“It seems,” Grace said, folding her hands flat on the table in front of her. “That we must make a bit of a side trip before we dock at Tortuga. I thought it best to inform you, since that is your intended destination.”   
  
_As if I’d forgotten._  
  
He scowled. Even after the nearly four months since his court-martial, he still wanted it. Tortuga held a promise for him, a promise of apathy, anonymity, and oblivion. Sweet, numbing oblivion.   
  
“And where is it we’re going?” he asked.   
  
“I’ve some business to see to in Port Royal.”  
  
For a moment it was as if everything stopped and the cold hand of panic seized him. Port Royal…how could he show his face there? People knew him there. They would wonder, they would stare.  
  
“Why exactly does this concern me?” he asked, taking care to keep his tone irreverent.   
  
Grace leaned forward, holding his gaze with that deadpan stare of hers. Her eyes were blue. A slate grey and North Sea blue. Stormy colours. He had never noticed before.  
  
“I need information,” she said. “I need the name of the most crude, disreputable tavern in that town, and how to get there.”  
  
Had she not looked and sounded so earnest, James would have laughed; he found it amusing as it was. The question was so unexpected it was nearly comical.   
  
“And you think I can help you with that?” he asked, leaning forward as well, matching her stare for stare.   
  
A grin tugged at Grace’s lips, and not a particularly pleasant one. Something flashed in her eyes; a wicked spark of amusement.   
  
“Oh, yes,” she said. She smirked at him for a moment more, then straightened. “I think you can help me a great deal, Mr. Norrington.”   
  
Silence. A suspended moment where all he felt was shock, not unlike being stabbed and about as pleasant. Across the table, Grace was smiling at him, that irritating, congenial grin she’d shown him his first day aboard.   
  
_You sly devil of a woman!_  
  
James slumped back in his chair with a sigh. “How long have you known?”  
  
Grace’s expression was serious now. She tugged a tattered parchment out from under the string that bound her package and tossed it down in front of him. James picked it up and unfolded it…and threw it down after one glance. It was the docket for the _Glory,_ and there at the end of the list, in a sloppy but perfectly legible hand, was scrawled the name “James Norrington”. She had known all along.   
  
“James,” he heard Grace say. “The tavern…I need to know.”  
  
“You knew who I was the entire voyage and yet you said nothing,” James said, a twinge of anger beginning to tighten his chest. “And now when you need something from me you play this.” He smacked the parchment where it lay on the table. “This hidden card. A clever extortion, Captain.”   
  
Grace frowned, and much to his surprise, James thought he saw hurt flash across her face.   
  
“That was not my intent,” she said, looking away from him. “I had hoped you would simply tell me. I don’t want to blackmail a friend, but if I must then so be it.”   
  
_Friend?_  
  
Whatever James had thought to say fled his mind. That Grace considered him a friend was something that had never occurred to him. A casual companion, just an understanding ear to spill the frustrations of command to, yes, but a friend? Grace still hadn’t looked at him and the silence between them was heavy. Did she truly consider him a friend? The word meant so much more to him now than it had before. To the Commodore, a friend had meant a fellow officer, a game of chess, a man who shared his interests. To James the derelict, a friend was a strong arm to keep him on his feet and a cool hand on his forehead, someone who cared enough, beyond all reason, to help him. It meant there was at least one person in the world who would be willing to sew his hammock one day, and that was a deeper, more desperate thing than any bond made over a chessboard.   
  
“The _Black Dogg_ ,” he began, studying the knots in the wood of the table. “At the east end of Haming Street has a certain reputation for violence. It’s well deserved.”  
  
Grace looked up and she didn’t smile as James had expected. She only nodded and murmured “Thank you”. Sitting there as she was, bound up in folds of rose-coloured cotton, it was hard to believe she would even touch a pistol, much less cock it back and hold it to a man’s chest. But if there was anything he had learned from his catastrophic romantic failure, it was that appearances could not be trusted, especially with women.   
  
“There’s something else,” Grace said, leaning forward on the table once more. “About you.”  
  
James looked up from his examination of the table with a frown. “About me?”  
  
“Yes,” Grace sighed. She looked worried and that was unusual in someone as stoic as she normally was. “I have ways of obtaining information from inside the East India Trading Company,” she continued. “And it seems your neck is destined for the noose.”  
  
“Is that so? On what charge?” James asked, his tone cynical. Set to hang…it was almost humorous. Though for having just been told he was marked for death, he was feeling remarkably calm.  
  
“Conspiring to free a convicted man,” Grace answered.   
  
James closed his eyes and bowed his head. So this was to be his reward for his moment of weakness, for following his instinct instead of his intellect. Jack Sparrow may be a halfway decent man, a point he conceded only very grudgingly, but that one day, one bloody day’s head start, hadn't been born out of his admission of the pirate’s supposed goodness. It had been a selfish, sudden decision from his desire to give one last thing to the woman who didn’t love him. The memories of that day were still painfully sharp—to alive and too aching to be burned out, no matter how much rum he put to it. The realization that he was a thing used, nothing more than a means to an end, was a hard blow to bear and one that struck far deeper than just pride. In truth he had needed that one day for himself as much as anything, to try to pull himself together.  
  
 _And a fine job of that I did._   
  
“In light of that,” he heard his captain say. “I think it would be best if you rid yourself of that uniform…unless, of course, you want to be captured.”   
  
Their eyes met and Grace didn’t need to ask—what she left unsaid asked the question well enough. Did he want to die? It was frightening in that instant that it was offered how much of him screamed “yes”. The noose would bring the narcosis that no about of rum could achieve—no more regrets, no more nightmares, no more guilt. Death would be welcome, a deserving sentence for his actions…or a recreant escape from comeuppance, an easy way out?  Death was no penance when compared with what he was falling into. Or did any of it matter at all? Did he truly care what became of him? The answer this time was a resounding “no”. His head had begun to ache.  
  
 _I need a drink._  
  
“Once I rid myself of this uniform,” James said. “What do you propose I do? Go about my business in the nude?”  
  
Grace’s mouth quirked into an impish grin. “As…entertaining as that would be,” she said, eyeing him in a way that made his mouth very dry all of a sudden. “I took the liberty of providing clothes for you.” She stood and opened the package she had brought, pulling back the paper to reveal a pair of breeches, a shirt, and a rather fine looking black waistcoat. “Put these on. I need to be sure they fit.”  
  
James had already shrugged off his coat and begun unbuttoning his now-shabby waistcoat when he realized Grace seemed to have no intention of leaving the room. She was standing there, arms crossed, not even bothering with the pretense of acknowledging that the situation was potentially awkward.   
  
“You’re just going to watch, are you?” he growled, continuing stubbornly with the buttons.  
  
“I will turn around, James,” Grace said, raising her chin ever so slightly. “But it will be when I choose.”   
  
_Bloody presumptuous woman._   
  
Ingrained rules of propriety warred with his new-found indifference for such things as he finished with the buttons and tossed the waistcoat aside. This went against everything he had ever been taught regarding his personal conduct; it was improper in the extreme to undress in front of a lady. Grace, though, hardly qualified as a lady—no woman who went about most of the time in breeches, brandishing pistols did. He kicked his boots off his feet. She was brash and tough; lacing her up in skirts and petticoats wouldn’t change her. He tugged his shirt off over his head.   
  
He could feel Grace’s eyes on him as keenly as if she were touching him. The nerve of the woman! If she hadn’t averted her eyes yet, she wasn’t likely to, and that just wasn’t acceptable. He looked up at her…and knew instantly it had been a mistake.  
  
Grace hadn’t moved. In fact, she stood so still it was hard to tell she was breathing, but James could see the tension in her shoulders, in her hands. She licked her lips, just a little, a nervous gesture, but he was riveted. The low whispers that had been building in the back of his mind burst to the forefront in a heady rush. It was lascivious, a purely animal hunger that he had bottled up and beaten into submission with an iron will. He found himself wondering, and wondering vividly, what it would be like to kiss her. Would she submit with cold acceptance only to berate him afterwards? Would she be as yielding in love as she was steely in command? Or would she match him in fervor, best him even?  
  
 _Stop this. Stop it now._  
  
He dropped his gaze and cleared his throat, the harsh sound seeming more grating in the tense silence. “Do you mind?” he snapped; his moment of rapacity had distinctly soured his mood. Grace turned away from him sharply, her skirts swirling around her feet. James continued changing as quickly as he could. What was the matter with him? He wasn’t drunk, and he hadn’t been too long in the sun, nor had he been concussed recently that he could recall. Why, then, had he just wanted to tumble his captain?  
  
 _Because she’s an attractive woman whose company you enjoy and you’re lonely._  
  
He tried to beat the thought down, but it was true. Grace was a comely woman who cut a fine figure in breeches—a fact he had previously noted and henceforth tried his damndest to deny. She was educated and had a quick mind, which made conversing with her a pleasure and she had been kind to him, treating him with dignity despite his rudeness and routine inebriation. And he _was_ lonely, almost painfully so. If that loneliness had been of the flesh alone he would have fallen in with some two-penny whore long ago, but it was more than that. It was always more than that—with him, nothing was ever simple. Try as he might and whatever exterior he had managed to show in his former life, he couldn’t keep his emotions from knotting themselves up in everything.   
  
“Well, what do you think?” he said, tightening the belt around his waist.  
  
Grace turned to face him and laughed. “You make a fine looking ruffian, provided you don’t shave that beard,” she said. “Trim it if you like, but don’t get rid of it.”   
  
James scratched his chin somewhat self-consciously. He’d never gone so long without a shave in his life and he’d been half intending to find a barber to remedy the situation.  
  
“I suppose the worse I look the less recognizable I am,” he remarked with only a touch of bitterness.   
  
“Yes, but I think it suits you, besides,” Grace said, looking him up and down in much the same manner as a tailor. “These fit better than I expected. Thank God, Danny was near your height.”  
  
“Danny?” James asked, and Grace froze; clearly it was a name she hadn’t meant to mention. Her lips pressed together in a firm line and she began abruptly gathering up his old clothes.  
  
“Daniel. Daniel Monroe,” she replied, her words stiff and clipped. “He was my captain. And my abductor.”   
  
“Abductor?” James exclaimed, surprised. “With all due respect, Captain, why would anyone wish to abduct you?”  
  
Grace paused, a pensive and slightly rueful look on her face. “I was not always the person I am,” she answered haltingly. “There was a heady ransom to be had for me once, believe it or not.”  
  
James had far more questions begging to be asked, but he let the matter rest. The emotion in Grace’s voice was something he was all too familiar with; he understood regret and mourning for the loss of happier times. For some reason, the revelation that she hadn’t been born to the life she led was comforting. They were similar spirits, she and he, more so than he had realized.   
  
“Wait,” he said, jerking out of his reverie as Grace reached for his coat. He picked it up, running his thumbs over the fraying brocade. “I’m keeping this.”  
  
“Are you certain?” Grace asked. “A Navy post-captain’s coat is rather distinctive.”  
  
“Any man may steal a coat,” James replied gruffly. He would never admit, not even to himself, that he couldn’t completely turn his back on who he had been. It was his way: he had to have something, some remnant to cling to, even if it caused him nothing but pain. He was a glutton for punishment and always had been; he had kept Elizabeth’s last letter to him locked in his desk aboard the _Dauntless_ for the same reason.  
  
Grace set his uniform clothes on the table and began wrapping them up in the paper. “All right,” she said. “But the rest will be burned.”  
  
“Good,” James managed to bite out, pulling his coat up over his shoulders.  
  
Finished with the package, Grace placed her cap on her head, tucking her hair neatly underneath. She picked up the bundle and slipped the docket back under the string.  
  
“We set sail in ten days, James,” she said, moving towards the door. “I expect to see you aboard. And to see you steady as you are now would be a welcome thing.”  
  
“Aye, Captain,” James replied, and with just a hint of a parting smile, Grace slipped out the door.  
  
James sighed and fell back onto his bed, where he lay staring up at the ceiling, thoughts whirling through his head in a maelstrom. Just when he thought things were leveling out, just when it seemed his world was about to cease its topsy-turvy rotation, chance gave the globe another spin. His identity was known, he was doomed to dance the hempen jig, he was being forced to return to the one place in the Caribbean he wanted most to avoid, and to top it all off, he appeared to be developing a strong carnal interest in his captain.   
  
_I really need a drink._  
  
Steady and sober could wait another ten days.  
  


* * *

  
  
The sunlight streaming through the high, wide windows warmed her back as she knelt on the stone floor, hands gloved in black lace resting clasped on the pew in front of her. The morning’s service had long since ended and the church was empty save for the priest, and no priest would disturb a woman in prayer—most certainly not one dressed for mourning.   
  
Grace bowed her head, fighting hard against the press of tears; the black habit may have been a disguise, but the prayer was sincere. Normally, she prayed for the safety of her men who lived and the souls of those she had lost, but not today. Today she prayed for herself, and she prayed for strength.   
  
It had shaken her, going to the _Star and Compass_ during the daylight hours. It was all too perfect, James staying at that particular inn and at Cromley’s recommendation. But of course, Cromley didn’t know. None of the crew did…  
  
 _…The rain fell hard and close, plastering her hair against her face as she struggled up the short ladder. She berated herself that she could climb to the main topgallant in a full gale with less trouble, but her limbs still shook. When she reached the top, she found herself frozen again, staring numbly at the rickety door with its foggy window panes. Should she knock or simply enter? Even as she stood there wondering and stretched out her hand towards the door, a heavily accented voice came from within._  
  
 _“Come in, ti sè. I don’ bite.”_  
  
 _Steeling her resolve, Grace pushed the door open with her outstretched hand and entered. The room was a shambles of tables, chairs and a disarray of unrelated, arcane-seeming objects, a snake or two slinking about in the clutter. A swaying labyrinth of jars, bottles, and dried plants hung suspended from the low rafters and at the center of all this strangeness was the witch-woman herself. Tia Dalma, the dock men had called her. She wore an old, frayed dress, inexpertly embellished with lace and other trinkets, chicken feathers entwined in her dark tangle of hair. An array of tiny black dots encircled her kohl-lined eyes and her lips were tinted black, as though she had smeared kohl on them as well. She smiled, and despite the thick, pressing heat, Grace shivered._  
  
 _“I—I was told you could help me,” Grace said, for once not caring that her voice trembled._  
  
 _“Mayehbe I do, an’ mayehbe I don’,” the witch-woman said, moving towards her with a slow, swaying step. She stopped and stared at Grace with her piercing, black eyes, scrutinizing, delving._  
  
 _“You are not a one for sellin’ her skirt,” she said. “I know dis about you, ti sè. You a captain. Sea blooded, you are. Why do you come?”_  
  
 _From the haunting way the witch-woman looked at her, Grace knew the question._  
  
 _“I can’t keep it,” she answered; it was no more than a hoarse whisper._  
  
 _“So you come to me to rid him like de whores do, hmm?”_  
  
 _It was so sharp and so harsh and so painfully true. Grace felt hot tears spill down her cheeks and her arms instinctively tightened around her belly, which hadn’t even begun to round. The witch-woman led her to a chair, all the while stroking Grace’s hair and crooning indistinct words that were at once eerie and comforting._  
  
 _“You don’ want to kill de boy, ti sè,” she said. “Dat is not your way.”_  
  
 _“The boy?” Grace asked, looking up. “You know it’s a boy?”_  
  
 _“Mmm-hmm,” the witch-woman said, and she lay a hand on Grace’s abdomen. “Him goin’ be a good, strong boy dat love de sea.” She grinned. “Like you. Like him pappa.”_  
  
 _“What do I do?” Grace whispered. She couldn’t go through with it, not now. She already knew what his name was._  
  
 _The witch-woman leaned forward, black-stained lips pulled back in a leer to show black-stained teeth. “Mayek payment, ti sè, an’ I tell you how dis go.”_  
  
Grace drew a shaky breath, resting her head against her hands. It had all fallen out as Tia Dalma had said it would—Abigail Hunter had lost her child at precisely the right time to take Grace’s. For the price of a tawdry ring she had bought her son a good life.   
  
_My Benjamin._  
  
It had cut her down to the core of her being, giving him up. She could still remember his softness, the racing of his tiny heart against her chest, his cries growing farther and farther away when her uncle came to take him. She could still feel Isaac hugging her to him while she screamed. But even in that half-mad sorrow, she had known it couldn’t be. A ship was no place to raise a child and a captain had no time for it. Still, as glad as she was that Benjamin was healthy and happy, she couldn’t stamp out the bitter jealousy she felt at the thought of another woman holding her son. She should be the one to raise him, teach him, love him, and all the things a mother is meant to do for her child.   
  
Grace had been shocked to see him at the inn. Nine years old already! He was growing up fine, dark-headed like his father and with very little of herself in him that she could see, though she saw her grandfather in his smile. But his eyes! How strange to see those eyes she hated so much in such an innocent face. Would people wonder as he grew older? Would they take notice of his wild, black hair and dark, laughing eyes and realize it didn’t follow either side? Would he question it himself and seek out the truth, or live his life believing himself a Scotsman? There were so many maybes and what-if’s but Grace knew one thing for certain—her son would go to sea. She hadn’t missed the look of sheer joy on his face when he spoke of sailing or the open adoration in his eyes when he looked at James. Tia Dalma had been right.

_And about more than him._  
  
Grace bit down on her lip in an attempt to stem the tears blurring her sight. It had taken all her resolve not to shake him and scream that it had been her—the spyglass, the maps, the toy ships, the compass, all of it. For the first year or so, she couldn't bear to think of him, but the Frenchman's bullet had changed all that. She brought things for him  every time she was in port now. Abigail, she knew, suspected Edward Grace, privateer, of being his father and always passed on her gifts in good faith. But Grace had never meant to see him. She had never wanted that, never wanted to feel _this_.

_"You made you choice, ti sè_. _You made it before you come to me."_

She had never doubted it before. She hadn't allowed it. Not for the first time, she wished the Church of England held with confession. She longed for home.  
  
Someone placed a hand on her shoulder and she jumped, hastily wiping tears from her eyes; she’d forgotten Isaac was coming to meet her.   
  
“Is something wrong?” he asked as she rose and seated herself in the pew.  
  
“No,” Grace lied, summoning a half-hearted smile that she hoped looked reassuring. “Just reminiscing.”   
  
Isaac didn’t press her, but the look he gave her made it clear he had seen straight through her attempted ruse.   
  
“I take it you have what we need,” he said, sitting down beside her. He took her hand and gave it a slight squeeze—he always had a way of comforting her, even when she denied needing it. Grace took a deep breath. The time for doubts was done.

_I must be steel and salt now._  
  
“Tell Skinner he will meet Mr. Hart at the _Black Dogg_ tavern at the east end of Haming Street,” she said. “He is to look for a man in a Navy coat.”   
 


	6. The Streets of Port Royal

Dusk was falling over Port Royal when the _Glory_ dropped anchor in the harbor.  The sky bled vibrant reds and purples along the horizon, and stars were already visible, like distant candle flames in the gathering gloom. Night followed swiftly, inky dark and hot. The moon was waning, but bright, and the waves gleamed silver over the roiling black.  
  
But James, sprawled cat-like in his hammock below decks saw none of it, nor had any desire to do so; the dank boards were view enough. He raised the bottle to his lips and took a sip—a _small_ sip, he had to remind himself—before he corked it up again. It had to last him a while yet. Grace had left about two hours previous, leaving Ames in charge and orders not to disembark until she returned. Apparently, she had gone for talks aboard the East India ship currently sharing the harbor. James found that strange, considering the _Glory_ currently flew East India colors herself, but he was in no mood to question. He could hear the scuffling and rhythmic tapping of booted feet on the deck overhead, and strains of raucous song and bawdy lyrics drifted down from above—his crewmates were in high spirits.  
  
 _So much the better for them._  
  
“Come up, Sir James! Join us!”  
  
Tousle-haired and beaming, Cromley bounded into view out of the semi-darkness.  
  
“Started early, have ye?” the boy asked, eyeing the bottle dangling from James’ fingers.  
  
James grimaced. “No. I need my wits about me tonight. Unfortunately.”  
  
“Jolly good!” Cromley exclaimed. “Ye’ll come make the rounds with us, then, eh?”  
  
“I have no desire to pass the night with some woman of questionable hygiene,” James sniped, uncorking the rum.  
  
Cromley kicked at a bit of straw, leaning against a beam. “Some houses keep blokes, if that’s more ye’re way.”  
  
 _Bloody Hell!_  
  
James very nearly choked on his rum. “Beg pardon?” he coughed once he had succeeded in swallowing.  
  
“Apologies, mate,” Cromley said, holding up his hands. “It’s just ye didn’t go ‘round to the houses last port, an’ bein’ a Navyman—”  
  
“Do you honestly think I would have lived to be court-martialed if those were my tastes?” James said. “It’s a hanging offense, Cromley.”  
  
“How was I to know?” Cromley shrugged. “But if ye don’t go in fer buggery, why not pop into a house for a tumble now and again? Does a man good, it does.”  
  
James sighed, kneading his forehead—fond as he was of Cromley, his persistence could become a nuisance. “Have you considered that maybe it’s because I think it immoral?” he said. “As in _wrong_?”  
  
“Ah, I see how it is,” Cromley replied. “Ye’ve got a lady somewhere waitin’ fer ye. Haven’t ye?”  
  
He felt as if something unbearably tight had constricted around his chest. A lady waiting for him was what he had wanted most, the one thing that had been missing from an otherwise ideal life.  
  
 _Elizabeth could have been my lady._  
  
Even after what she’d done to him, after the storm, after everything...when he entertained thoughts of might-have-beens, it was, for the most part, still Elizabeth’s face that greeted him. For the most part. At least, he thought so.  
  
“No,” James finally answered, unable to keep his tone neutral. “Not anymore.”  
   
“She’s dead, then?” Cromley asked, his face suddenly grave. If there was one thing all sailors respected, no matter the colors they sailed under, it was loss.  
  
James gave a half-hearted laugh. “Hardly.”  
  
 _That may have been easier._  
  
“The way ye talk ye’d think she were!” Cromley exclaimed. “If she en’t dead, then what—”  
  
“She jilted me, Cromley. For another man. Satisfied?” James growled, fingers tight around the neck of the bottle.  
  
“Bleedin’ Christ, Sir James! No need to be cross with me, I didn’ know.” Cromley settled back against the beam. “Honestly, mate, would be best to forget her.”  
  
James quirked an eyebrow and shook the bottle, still nearly full. “You know, I have been trying.”  
  
 _And trying far too much._  
  
“No, no, no,” the young man said, waving his hands. “That en’t the stuff fer women trouble.” He leaned down, grinning with the air of someone giving what he considered to be the sagest of advice. “What you need is to get between a woman’s thighs. A real woman, savvy?”  
  
James jolted at the word ‘savvy’, but didn’t comment on it. “For God’s sake, Joshua Cromley, I am not going to make use of a whore! And what would you know about real women? You’re how old, fifteen?”  
  
“Seventeen,” Cromley shot back, looking smug. “But I was fifteen when I tumbled my first wench.” He frowned at James’ disapproving scowl, and suddenly became unusually somber. “I was born at sea, you know. My mama, she were a captain’s lady, so I been around whores all my life. I tell you, Sir James, best thing for a broken man is a whore, an’ not just on a count of her bein’ free with her skirts.”  
  
“Then, why is it, pray tell?”  
  
“ ‘Cause they know about the right words," Cromley said. "Their hearts get broke so much, they’re real good with knittin’ ‘em up."  
  
A silence passed between them, and once again James found himself forced to admit a younger man was wiser than he. Was that what he needed? Someone to knit him up? He may be a fool, but he didn’t believe it; he was hardly worth salvaging.  
  
“All hands on deck! Step to, layabouts!”  
  
Grace’s voice snapped like the lash and the response was just as quick. James scrambled out of his hammock and, setting the rum aside, followed Cromley up to the deck.  
  
The lamps had been lit. Grace, once more in her full merchant captain guise, stood on a crate with a small smirk on her face and her hands clasped behind her back, visible to all the crew.  
  
“All right, you dogs!” she said. “I have business in the town tonight. Now, I could leave you here to waste away like the lechers you are, but I’m a fair and honest captain—”  
  
She was interrupted by a wave of cheers, whistles, and cries of “Hear, hear!” and “Amen to that!”, but the moment she held up her hand, silence fell. “One rule as always, boys: she sails at midday. Now, fall in, collect your coin from Mr. Ames here, and to the women with you!”  
  
There was another surge of cheering and hearty laughter as the men jostled to form a line. James was of half a mind to forfeit his pay; he wouldn’t be needing it tonight. He had no intention of staying ashore any longer that was necessary.  
  
“Comin’ with us tonight, Jimmy-lad?” the ship’s carpenter, Vale, asked, clapping James around the shoulders.  
  
“Vale, I—” he began to protest.  
  
“Nah, he’s a proper gentleman, he is,” Cromley laughed, slinging an arm around his other shoulder.  
  
“Oh, aye, a gentleman!” Vale crowed. “So much a gentleman he’s likely forgot how it works!”  
  
The most James could manage was a grimace and he shrugged out from under his crewmates, which only fueled their amusement.  His carnal prowess, or apparent lack thereof, was a regular topic of entertainment that had suddenly risen in popularity during the short journey from St. Kitts. He’d grown accustomed to their ribbing by now, however crude it was, but he was in no mood for levity tonight.  
  
“Vale! Cromley!”  
  
The two men choked off their laughter at the sound of the captain’s voice, looking surprisingly abashed.  
  
“Away with you,” Grace ordered, tossing a hefty bag of coin to each, and with triumphant grins, they joined the rest of the men thronging around the gangplank, but James didn’t miss the amused glance they shared or the wink and impish smirk Cromley threw back at him. "Not you, Sir James."  
  
James sighed, straightening his coat. “Captain?”  
  
“A word if you please,” Grace said, gesturing for him to follow. “Your plans tonight don’t involve the local harlots, I take it?” She asked once they had moved away from the line.  
  
“No,” James answered, a bit more venomous than he’d intended. “I have other things to see to.”  
  
“I hope, then, that those plans don’t include anything so foolish as turning yourself in,” she said.  
  
There was something different about her voice, a slight terseness to her tone that caught his ear and he turned to look at her. She was pure authority tonight, but for the briefest of moments he thought he saw a look in her eye that he'd never expected to be directed at him. It was a gleam and a slight quirk of a brow, the sort of gaze he'd seen less than honorable men turn on women, unabashedly admiring and in no way chaste. The night air suddenly felt far warmer. He was hard pressed not to smirk, and once again he had to stifle musings about the taste of her lips. Such thoughts had become alarmingly frequent in the past weeks.  
  
 _Damn and blast!_  
  
“No,” he said, forcing his gaze out to the black sky. “Not myself.”  
  
“Good. That’s good,” Grace murmured, almost to herself. She looked him in the eye again, but this time her gaze was all unwavering blue-grey steel. “Whatever business you have tonight, you will meet me at the _Black Dogg_ when you’re through. If you can’t find me, ask the barkeep for Doña Isabel, is that clear?”  
  
“Aye, Captain,” James responded, taken aback though he was by the sternness and strangeness of the order.  
  
Grace nodded, seeming satisfied. She moved as if to leave, but she paused, resting her hand on his arm; it felt like a firebrand.  
  
“Take care tonight, James,” she said and brushed past him, heading for her cabin.

* * *

  
The governor’s mansion had changed. What had once been grand and stately was now almost grotesque in its opulence, James realized as he slipped from shadow to shadow through the garden. The windows were dark save for the soft, golden glow emanating from one on the ground floor that he knew to be the governor’s study. Looking at that warm light it was hard to keep his mind from wandering into memories of better times when he would have entered the place through the front door, instead of skulking under a windows like a common thief.  
  
 _Or a pirate._  
  
Shaking the stubborn thought from his head, James splayed his hands on the windowsill and swung his legs over. His sea boots hit the paneled floor with what to him was an audible tap, but the governor never glanced up from the mess of papers littering his desk. Very little had changed since he had been in this room last. Nothing had been moved. The books lining the shelves even looked to be leaning the same direction, still coated in dust and untouched for half a year.  
  
“My apologies for the intrusion, Governor Swann,” James finally said, and the old man jumped.  
  
“Who are you? How dare—” he began, surging to his feet, then he paused, eyes widening in sudden recognition. “James! My God! What’s happened to you?” He asked, as he took in James’ unshaven face and fraying coat. “We feared you were dead.”  
  
James stepped away from the window, feeling that indolent smirk sliding onto his face. It was becoming habitual. “Not quite dead, Governor,” he said. “Not quite.”  
  
“What happened, James?” Weatherby asked, more insistent. “Elizabeth has been worried sick.”  
  
James glanced up at the mention of her name, he couldn’t help it. She had been worried? She had expressed concern for his well-being? The thought should have pleased him. At another time it would have, but now all he felt was a bitter emptiness.  
  
“I failed,” he said, and even to his own ears his voice was dead and hollow. “I chased Sparrow halfway around the globe to no avail.” His fingers felt clumsy as he pulled his sword from the baldric and laid it on the desk. The gold didn’t gleam the way he remembered. “Take that and give it to a more deserving man.”  
  
“What is this foolishness?” Weatherby said, his voice growing sterner. “If this is your attempt at a resignation, Commodore, I refuse to accept it.”  
  
James smirked again, resisting the urge to laugh. “So you’ve not heard. News travels more slowly than I expected,” he said. “Seeing as I am no longer in the service of His Majesty’s Royal Navy, having been forcibly removed from said position, I hardly think your acceptance of it is worth a damn, sir.”  
  
He didn’t bother fighting the almost smug satisfaction he felt at the look of confusion and indignant disbelief on the governor’s face. He supposed he should feel some sense of shame for that-- the governor was a kind man and they had been friends of a sort, he supposed-- but there was nothing.  
  
“Forcibly removed?” the governor sputtered, clearly affronted. “What in Hell are they playing at? I’ll have you know I intend to protest this, and strongly!”  
  
“Save your parchment, Governor,” James said with a weak grin. “Officers who can’t keep their men alive have no place in the Navy.”  
  
He cringed as understanding dawned on the governor’s face, and that sick feeling of intense guilt that he had tried so hard to drown out came twisting back, gnawing at his insides like a sickness. He didn’t look up as he turned back towards the window; he didn’t want to see the pity and the sympathy he was sure was there. He didn’t want to hear that it wasn’t his fault. He was about to clamber over the ledge when the governor finally spoke.  
  
“James, what shall I tell her?” he asked.  
  
James sighed, hands braced on the window frame for just a moment. He could feel the remorse and the anger writhing in his gut and he laughed, a soft, scathing sound even to his ears.  
  
“Tell her I’m dead,” he said, and without a backwards glance, he slipped back through the window into the thick darkness.  
  
In the hall outside the study, Elizabeth stifled a sob and scurried back to bed before her father could open the door.

* * *

  
  
The east end of Haming Street had been a den of iniquity for as long as anyone could remember; some said the very stones of the street itself were made of sin. It rested nestled between the docks and the wild forest, a twisted half-way land of rum, whores, and opium fog. It was at once a terrifying tangled web of murder-strewn back alleys, and the dark, secret circus where Port Royal’s wealthy came to play, though not a one would admit it. No where else would a man find some of the roughest, cheapest taverns set beside the most discreet houses money could buy. Every few years or so an outcry flared up to eradicate the denizens of Haming Street and their vile trade in human immorality, but it never amounted to much. For all the talk against it, no one wanted it gone, not really.  
  
James strolled down the main walk, dodging drunks and the occassional brawl and women plying their trade. He kept his head down, though he was almost sure no one here would know his face, and tried as best he could to seem unimportant and inconspicuous, but it seemed to him that every able bodied whore along the row was drawn to him. They plucked at his coat, simpered and licked their lips at him, and twitched up their skirts to show their knees as he passed and some grabbed hold of him, cooing and suggesting that he let them “soothe his sorrow”. He scowled, wrenching his coat sleeve away from yet another woman. He was in a black mood, now, and very glad he hadn’t decided to give up his pay; all he wanted was to get his hands on enough rotgut rum to put him out for a day. If he could slip away from Grace once her business with him at the _Black Dogg_ was through.  
  
 _Unlikely._  
  
The woman had taken to minding him like a nursemaid when he wasn’t on watch, keeping close track of how much he drank. It was infuriating, but strangely pleasing in a way. Once, she’d even caught hold of his wrist as he made to uncork a second bottle and hissed in his ear that she’d flay him within an inch of his life if he went any further. He shivered, remembering the look in her eyes when she’d said it—an ice-cold calm so deep it left no doubt that she meant the threat seriously. With as familiar as they had been lately, he had forgotten what she used to be.  
  
James didn’t realize he had arrived at his destination until he was nearly past the door. All the taverns here looked the same to him. He stopped, looking up at the rough-hewn sign just to be sure before he entered. The noise of the place struck him as soon as he crossed the threshold, a dissonant chorus of lewd songs, drunken laughter, the shrieks of serving girls, and brutish gaming disputes punctuated here and there by the sharp crack of broken crockery. The press of people and sound and the stench of unwashed bodies were overwhelming. James forced his way through the crowd towards the bar, tipping over a few drunks and shaking off yet another hopeful lover in the process, all the while scanning the sea of faces for Grace through the hazy lantern light.  
  
 _She’ll be disguised, of course…damn her!_  
  
“You there! Barkeep!” he barked, a hint of his old authority creeping back into his voice. The wiry, balding man behind the bar turned to face him with a scowl.  
  
“Ar, tha’d be me,” he said. “What is it ye want? Room or rum?”  
  
Leaning forward on the counter, James beckoned the man closer. “Neither. Where might I find Doña Isabel?” he asked.  
  
The man didn’t nod, grin, or wink or give any sign at all that he knew what James meant. He simply huffed and began wiping down the countertop with a stain-ridden rag.  
  
“Out th’ alley door,” he grumbled, never looking up from his task.  
  
James swore under his breath, shoving people aside once again as he pushed towards the open door at the back of the tavern. What the Devil was Grace playing at with all this cloak and dagger nonsense? There was something beneath the surface here, and while he couldn’t see it, he could feel it.  
  
It was nowhere near as quiet or as dark in the alley as he had expected. The sounds of carousing were a continuous rumbling drone and the light spilling out of the back doors of other taverns and inching in from the main street dissipated the blackness to a sickly, yellow-tinged twilight. James looked up and down the alley, squinting slightly, but he saw no one.  
  
“Just bloody wonderful,” he grumbled, leaning back against the doorframe, arms crossed and a deep scowl on his face. Annoyed as he was by Grace’s distinct lack of presence, he couldn’t help but feel a twinge of anxiety. She was up to something, he was sure, and he couldn’t quite suppress the nagging idea that she may have set him up for capture. After all, he had a suspicion that despite giving up piracy she wasn’t the most lawful of privateers, and there very well could be a decent price on his head by now. The thought brought him a feeling of grim amusement, followed swiftly by morbid satisfaction as he felt the cold metal of a pistol pressed against his temple.  
  
“Move,” a man’s low voice hissed in his ear, and he was shoved away from the door.  
  
“So. I suppose you’ll be turning me in, then?” he asked, not bothering to keep the acidic laughter out of his voice. His assailant turned him around and put his back to the wall, the pistol aimed straight for his chest. He was a dark-haired man of middle years, from what James could tell, and moderately wealthy, judging by the cut of his clothes and his soft build. There was a nervous sheen on his brow, barely noticeable in the dim light, and the hand holding the pistol shook ever so slightly. A soft man, indeed.  
  
“Turn you in?” he said, and even his voice had a bit of a tremble to it. “As sure as my life, I will! It’s a goodly price they’ve put up for the man who brings you in.”  
  
“Is that so?” James replied, keeping his tone lightly conversational while his mind worked for a way out of the line of fire. He didn’t think the man had the nerve to shoot, but he was clumsy with the pistol, and that made him just as dangerous as any hardhearted brigand. “They must be quite desperate to hang me.”  
  
“I should think so!” the man spat. “When I think of the lives you’ve ruined…”  
  
 _How much was she paid for me, I wonder?_  
  
“Lead on, good sir,” James sighed. “I put myself at your mercy.”  
  
The man hesitated, shifting restlessly from foot to foot, eyes darting up and down the alley.  
  
“I could shoot you now and be done with it.”  
  
“You could,” James admitted with a respectful nod, clasping his hands behind his back. “I’ll not stop you.”  
  
The pistol wavered, and in that breath of a moment when the barrel jerked away from James’ chest, a shot cracked through the alley and the man collapsed with a yowl of pain. James sprang away from his would-be captor, snatching up the fallen pistol. Glancing around for his unexpected liberator, he saw a woman at the end of the alley, silhouetted against the mad, dancing light of the street beyond. She stalked towards him with long, sure steps, the heels of her fine shoes clicking against the cobbled stones. She held a still smoking pistol in her left hand, and with her right pulled another from the black sash slung around her hips. The man at James’ feet whimpered, a breathy, pitiful sound, fingers gripping the bloodied mess of bone that had once been his knee as if he could somehow scrape it back together. No sooner had James felt a fleeting stab of pity for the fellow than the woman spoke, as if she had known that brief thought.  
  
“Leave him lie, James.”  
  
 _By Christ!_  
  
It was Grace prowling towards him through the shadows, he knew that, and yet this woman, wrapped tight in luxuriant swaths of ruby-red silk, diamonds winking darkly at her throat, her long-fingered hands modestly hidden in delicate, black lace gloves, was a stranger. Grace was an elegant woman, a fact she could barely hide under men’s garments, but attired as she was, in every way a lady of highest quality, that indomitable elegance gained a deadly polish. She smiled down at her victim, the same chilling smile she had given the Spanish captain.  
  
“Señor Skinner. Such a shame,” she said, her words lilting with a rich musicality that James had heard before but couldn’t place. “You were a lovely client…so discreet.”  
  
James retreated a few steps, but his attention remained on the drama playing out before him. However immoral, however bloody, this was a window into Grace’s world, a key to the lock she kept on herself, and he couldn’t bring himself to leave.  
  
“Please…please,” the man called Skinner begged. “They caught me, what else was I to do? I—”  
  
Grace aimed her pistol for his head and clicked back the hammer with an almost cheery precision. “You violated the terms of our agreement.”  
  
Skinner’s breath was coming in panicked wheezes now, his eyes glazed with pain and terror. He licked his lips, swallowing hard and gasping. “Mercy, please! I’ll do anything! Anything you ask.”  
  
Grace’s smile vanished, and everything about her was calm and unmoving, the empty stillness of a viper before it strikes, and when she spoke her voice had an edge like cut glass. “I ask that you not betray me.”  
  
She fired, and James turned away.


	7. Uncharted Seas

The quiet that fell was thick and suspended. James didn’t dare move. Grace stood a few feet away from him, head bowed and arms hanging limp at her sides. The silence and the stillness hung over them like a night fog until, in a sudden swirl of blood-red skirts that were a little too blood-red at the hem, Grace tucked her pistols into her sash and snatched James by the arm, hauling him towards the lamp-lit street.  
  
“Walk with me,” she hissed. “Like a proper escort, please.”  
  
“What the Devil just happened?” James shot back. He'd seen men shot plenty of times, too many times. He'd done it himself. But that...  
  
“Not now,” Grace snarled, gripping his arm. He could feel her nails like cat claws through his coat, but he wouldn’t be placated so easily. Not this time.  
  
They broke from the gloom into the carnival of the street and suddenly Grace had melded into him, her body pressed tight to his, and for a brief second James was sure that every inch of his skin had caught fire.  
  
“Play along,” Grace whispered, her breath a warm shiver against his neck. He fought the grin he felt threatening at the corners of his mouth as he slid a possessive arm around her waist. She wanted him to play along, he would bloody well play along!  
  
“You shot a man back there,” he murmured into her hair. She smelled of lavender and the ocean. Despite what had just happened, he couldn't help his blood running a bit warmer.  
  
“ _Ai, que bo_ ,” Grace grumbled, steering him down the street. “There’s a boat waiting on the beach.”  
  
“That’s hardly an answer.”  
  
Her grip tightened. “It’s the answer I gave you.”  
  
James recognized the order and the steel in that voice, and he fell silent for the moment. What possible reason could she have had to shoot that man? Then again, it hadn’t been Grace who had pulled the trigger, it had been this wild creature in red, this Doña Isabel. But who on God's green earth was that? And the truly pressing question, why had Skinner come after him?  
  
Grace pulled him into the shadows between two brothels and separated herself from him, gathering her skirts up in her hands and breaking into a run. James followed, crashing through the flat, heavy fronds of the surrounding vegetation and skidding on loose stones until the two of them broke out onto the beach.  
  
“Push the boat off!” Grace called back as she clambered in and grabbed hold of the oars. James never broke his stride as his hands met the rough wood and with a grating scrape against the stony beach, the longboat slipped out into the harbor.  
  
The only sounds were the groaning of the oars and the splashing of the sea while James stared at the woman seated across from him. His mind was a whirl of questions without answers, and had been since he had stumbled onto her ship. Grace had never been clear and honest with him, not once, but no more. This was the end of it.  
  
“What happened back there?” He hadn’t meant for it to sound quite so stern.  
  
“I know you have questions, James,” Grace said. She didn’t look at him.  
  
“Yes, _Captain,_ I have questions,” he cut in, feeling a new and unfamiliar strength prowling in the back of his voice. “Let us begin with the man you have just murdered, shall we?”  
  
Grace continued to study the space near his feet. “It was—”  
  
“Necessary, I suppose?” James bit in. “Who was he?”  
  
“James—”  
  
“Who was he?”  
  
Grace kept rowing, her breath coming in strangled gasps as the oars clunked and creaked.  
  
“You’re wearing stays, aren’t you?” James asked.  
  
“I fail to see why it matters to you, but yes.”  
  
“Shouldn’t you be having a fainting spell about now, then?”  
  
 _Bitter. Too bitter._  
  
Grace snorted. “It’s an uncomfortable inconvenience, but hardly threatening. He was a merchant.”  
  
“A merchant?”  
  
“Henry Skinner.”  
  
“And whatever did he do to you that warranted being murdered in a filthy back alley?”  
  
“Nothing I care to explain to you,” Grace answered coolly.  
  
“But I’d so relish the explanation.”  
  
“It doesn’t concern you.”  
  
The anger that had been moldering in the back of his mind sparked and caught fire. “It doesn’t concern me?” James snarled.” The man was turning me in for payment!”  
  
“He told you that?” Grace asked. She appeared amused. “Another foolish blunder. Catch hold of that rope, James.”  
  
They had reached the ship. James did as he was ordered, still seething quietly. Grace had been in partnership with Skinner over his head, he was damn near sure of that now.  
  
 _Then why go to the trouble of murdering him to save my life?_  
  
Grace scrambled up the rungs with surprising agility considering her attire; she was clearly no stranger to scaling a ship in woman’s weeds. James followed and the moment his boots hit the boards he was ready to lay out his demands, but Grace slammed the intent back into his throat with a look that could have frozen beer.  
  
“If you have any more impertinent questions to ask me, they will be addressed in my cabin,” she said and marched away. Once again, James found himself tagging along in her wake. His feelings of outrage had in no way been diminished by the suggestion of being allowed to question her. He doubted she would grant him the courtesy of a truthful answer.  
  
James had been inside Grace’s quarters once before, playing watchdog to the Spanish captain's daughter. They were smaller than his own aboard the _Dauntless_ had been, and much more spartan. There was nothing more than a desk and a chest of drawers in the way of furnishing, and the bunk, while wide, was neatly built into the wall beneath the port window with drawers tucked beneath.  
  
“You may ask me anything you like in a moment, James,” Grace said just as he stepped forward to speak. “There is a bottle of wine in the top drawer there and glasses in one of them. I would like you to pour us each a healthy portion, if you please.”  
  
He felt a twinge of apprehension. “Are you certain, Captain?”  
  
“Quite certain.”  
  
They turned their backs on each other and James began rifling through the drawers for the glasses. Most were filled with books, ranging from Machiavelli to volumes of poetry. One was full of strange vials and jars that he assumed were cosmetic since clearly she had need of such things at times, but at last he found two heavy, wooden cups. He tried to grip the righteous rage that had been fueling him, but it was trickling away leaving bewilderment in its place. It was very unlike Grace to offer him a drink…unless, of course, there was something she wanted from him. She had plied him once before, and tonight had been a grisly reminder of just what she was willing to do.  
  
 _I must not drink. Or I must drink only a little._  
  
Even as the thought crossed his mind, his fingers closed around the cool, seductive smoothness of the wine bottle. It was mostly full. He had not tasted wine since before Sparrow, and he had had so little rum today. As if that realization were an order, he felt his hands begin to tremble. He gripped the cups as he poured, swearing under his breath. He turned, drinks in hand, and nearly dropped them at the sight that met his eyes.  
  
Grace was indecent. She was clad only in her shift, which James numbly supposed was clothed in the strictest sense of the word, but it was a shocking sight nonetheless. She plucked her cup from his hand with a stiff “Thank you” and leaned against her desk.  James found himself unduly fascinated by the way the dim light played in her hair; she looked so different with it twisted up the way it was, revealing the graceful line of her neck. There was an arrogance in the way she carried herself, a challenge that he wanted very much to meet.  
  
“Well, James,” she said. “You had questions for me.”  
  
James felt rather like he had when, as a midshipman, he had been struck in the head by the boom. His thoughts were a fog and the left shoulder of Grace’s shift was slipping a little. He sipped at his wine, resisting the urge to throw it back in one swallow. After the months of sickly sweet rum, it was like the nectar of the gods, but he wanted answers more than he wanted the drink. He summoned all the resolve he still possessed and forced himself not to dwell on how there was clearly more curve to her body than her usual garb showed.  
  
“Why did you kill Henry Skinner?” he said at last.  
  
“I would have thought that obvious, James,” Grace replied. “He had a pistol on you, after all.”  
  
James felt a flicker of returning anger that oddly fueled his increasing desire to tug those shift laces open. “He intended to turn me in. For the bounty.”  
  
Grace merely nodded. “I daresay he did.”  
  
“And what was to be your share of it?” James snapped. Her serene belligerence was doing nothing to quiet the wild thoughts dancing lewdly in his mind’s eye of just how he'd like to break that unruffled mask of hers. What would he find beneath it?  “How much was it worth to ferry me here?”  
  
“I beg your pardon?” Grace said, her voice still cool despite the sudden rigidity in her posture.  
  
“He knew me!”  
  
“No. He did not.”  
  
A stony silence followed her soft words. James was at a loss, but in his confusion he thought he saw regret fleet over Grace’s expression. She sighed, sipping from her glass before she spoke.  
  
“I have manipulated you for my own purpose, James, and for that I am profoundly sorry,” she said, meeting his eyes. “But it was not for the reason you seem to think. I have no wish to see you on the gallows.”  
  
“Then why did that man seem to know me?” James pressed.  
  
“Because I led him to believe that you were someone else,” Grace said. “He was under the impression that you were the smuggler he had been doing business with for the past two years.”  
  
James was on the verge of another question when it came back to him— _You were a lovely client…so discreet._  
  
“You’re the smuggler,” he said.  
  
“I am the smuggler,” Grace said with a nod. “Rum, opium, even tea and linens sometimes. Anything with a tax a man of business might find overbearing. Skinner was just one of several clients who have made arrangements with Isabel Hart for access to her husband’s services.”  
  
It all fell into place like the last moves of a well played chess game. He, James, had been nothing but a decoy, an actor for this “Mr. Hart” who did not exist, and he wasn’t pleased by it.  
  
“Why use me?” he asked, keeping his tone even.  
  
“Skinner was not a clever man, but he was a sneak,” Grace said. Some of the tension had eased out of her shoulders at his seemingly calm response. “I couldn’t risk using one of my men when there was the chance that he would recognize him. You, he had never seen. It was the safer choice.”  
  
“Safer for you, perhaps,” James retorted, his irritation with her and the unacceptable effect she was having on him sharpening his voice. “I, meanwhile, had a pistol to my head while you skulked in the shadows playing cloak and dagger games! There’s a price on my head, in case you’ve forgotten.”  
  
“Do you honestly think I wasn’t watching you from the moment you entered the tavern?” Grace snapped back, standing. “I would never have allowed him to harm you.”  
  
James scowled. “You could have informed me beforehand.”  
  
“And you would have followed my plan, would you? Hm?”  
  
James began a defiant ‘yes’, but the memory of the serpentine calculation in Grace’s eyes through the smoke from her pistol brought him up short.  
  
“I could never have trusted you with this, James,” she continued, and her voice had a strained, painful quality. “You’re no murderer. You’re a better man than that.”  
  
She meant it as a kindness, James knew, but it stung. ‘A better man’. He was always too noble, too good, too proper. All his life he'd been thought the ‘better man' and now he found the thought sickening.  He drained his wine.  
  
“And I suppose that’s a poor quality in your eyes, is it?” he sneered, letting his rage mingle headily with the lurid heat in his veins as he advanced on her. “You with your _pragmatism_ and your _piracy_.”  
  
Grace drew herself up, the storm in her eyes crashing and tangling with his. “I had no choice.”  
  
“There is always a choice!” James snarled.  
  
“What would you have had me do?” Grace snarled back, their faces mere inches apart. “Pressgang him? Buy his silence? Or perhaps I should have gently requested that he not hand me and my men over to the East India Trading Company, and by the good grace of man’s compassion, he would have held his tongue! All unreliable, James! Only a dead man tells no tales.”  
  
James felt the grimace on his face and he could taste the venom boiling up from the blackest depths of himself, but he spat it out at her without pause. “And you sleep like a babe on that lie, don’t you?”  
  
The pause was brief but sharp as a sword, and then Grace’s fist collided soundly with his jaw. It was a knock well worthy of any tavern brawl and James reeled back. For the space of a blink, he was shocked out of his rage, but Grace’s blow had broken the door to the dangerous thing he had kept under brocaded lock and key for so very long. He moved on her, not knowing what he intended, acting purely on the rush of the instant. One hand caught the back of her neck, the other gripped her wrist and he crushed her lips in a hard, bruising kiss.  
  
Her lips were rough from sun and salt, but they were warm and tasted hauntingly of wine and spices. She went rigid in surprise for only a moment and then her fingers were in his hair and there was no more space between them. His hand slipped from her neck to her back, fingers trailing over long, smooth hollows that were unmistakable lash scars. How far down her back did they reach? What unknown territories hid beneath the teasing cotton, waiting to be charted? He froze as he felt his fingers inching even lower and with an iron-willed effort, he wrenched himself away from her.  
  
 _What in God’s name is wrong with me?_  
  
They stared at each other as though they had never met—for all their camaraderie, perhaps they never had until this moment. Grace was gasping, her pretty, red mouth surprised and swollen by his assault. She licked her lips, not nervously as before, but slow and almost savoring. James felt his breath catch harshly in his throat.  
  
 _Christ, I need a drink. I need her._  
  
He strangled that thought. Or tried to. He couldn’t ignore the prowling and ravenous part of himself that was now biting at the bars, snarling to be set free right bloody now.  
  
“I...I apologize,” he managed at last and turned to leave.  
  
“No!”  
  
He was jerked to a halt by Grace’s hand on his arm as she pulled him back, placing herself firmly in his path of escape. That devouring look was in her eyes again and it made the pit of his stomach curl in anticipation.  
  
“What do you mean ‘no’?” James asked, doing his damndest to ignore the rapid rise and fall of her chest and the frantic staccato pounding against his ribs.  
  
“I mean, no, you are not leaving my cabin,” Grace said, and her voice had taken on a low softness that whispered along his skin. “I’ve waited far too long for this.”  
  
James bit down on the gut-wrenching howl of primal triumph that wracked his body at those words, bit down hard. “Captain, I...what do you mean by that?” he said. Despite his desperate attempt at propriety, his words came out strangled and husky.  
  
Grace chuckled, a throaty and painfully sensual sound. “Please, James,” she said, taking a step towards him. “I’m standing here in my underthings. You can dispense with the formalities.”  
  
James inched back in an effort to keep himself from tearing said underthings from her body right then and there, and found himself pressed against the edge of her desk. Their positions had been reversed. She was so very near, lips hovering above his own. He ached to close the gap between them, to taste that ferocity again, ached to touch and take and _ravish_ —  
  
 _Stop it! Stop it now!_  
  
“Grace,” he began, trying desperately to look at anything, anything but her. “You’re offering me something that I can’t take.”  
  
She lay her hands against his stomach and he gripped the desk like a lifeline, not quite managing to stifle the groan that sprang from her touch.  
  
“On the contrary,” she murmured. “I’m offering you something that we both want very much.”  
  
 _She’s right. She’s right. Oh, God, why does she have to be right?_  
  
“I can’t—” he tried again, but Grace’s hands sliding up and across his chest robbed him of his voice.  
  
“You can. I want you to,” she said. “It isn't as though you'll be taking anything from me.”  
  
He had assumed as much for a woman in this life. He would have been very surprised to have learned otherwise, but if he was no threat to her virtue, what was deterring him? Why was he resisting? What she was offering, and offering freely and with...fervor was tempting. It had been years since he had felt this, too many years. Not even Elizabeth had conjured this degree of need in him.  
  
 _Elizabeth._  
  
Was it her? Was he denying himself because of _her_ , out of some twisted vestige of devotion to a silly girl who thought him little more than a tool for her use? Would he never be free of it? The blunt truth hit him then like the cold spray of the sea—Elizabeth did not want him. Elizabeth did not want him, and he had never wanted her, not like this, however fond he'd been or still was. He wanted Grace, and for once in his life, consequences be damned.  
  
“Take down your hair,” he said and she smiled.  
  
With the pull of a few pins, her hair tumbled down in a soft, golden wave that just brushed her collarbone. James had enjoyed seeing her with her hair unbound for far longer than he wanted to admit. He ran his fingers through it and leaning in to kiss her, he caught the scent of gunpowder.    
  
“I, um...it's been some time since a woman found me...suitable,” he said, trailing his fingertips along her throat. He kissed her just behind her ear and she made the most delicious sound that all but turned his skin to fire. He felt her shiver.  
  
“Is that so?” Grace said as she unbuckled his baldric and let it drop to the floor. “It's been some time since I found any man suitable.”  
  
He sucked in his breath with a hiss as she slipped a hand beneath his waistcoat, caressing him. Blood pounded in his ears and he felt suddenly giddy. Lord, she was bold! He wasn't used to this...not at all...and by the look on her face, she knew it and was enjoying his discovery.  
  
“Seems you haven't forgot how it works after all,” she said with a smirk.  
  
“I think I remember a few things,” James managed to say and he spun, pinning Grace to her desk with his hips. He could feel hard-built strength rippling under her skin, but oh, she was softer than she looked and so warm. His teeth tore into her neck and she gave a startled cry. James turned away with a groan, head spinning.  
  
 _No, damn it all!_  
  
He hadn't meant to do that, but the anguish and loneliness and years of restrained desire had taken more of a toll than he thought. He was dizzily aware of an obligation to apologize. He intended to apologize.  
  
“I—”  
  
“Don’t you dare,” Grace said, eyes wide and dark, looking just as ravening as he felt. She raised a hand to her neck, tracing her fingers over the already bruising mark in her skin. A shuddering sigh escaped her lips and she reached for him, fingers twining in his hair. The kiss was hard and desperate and a little begging, a declaration and a challenge.  
  
His fingers fumbled with the knot in her shift laces, and hers fumbled with his belt. Lips, teeth, and nails giving and gripping in a frantic descent into a place where right and wrong no longer mattered until there was nothing left but him and her and the feel of skin against cloth that quickly gave way to skin against skin.  
  
The knotted web of scarring in the hollow of her left shoulder gave him pause. His fingers traced it lightly, almost reverently, and her hands followed the lines of his own, reading each other through the brands of faded pain. The pistol shot to her shoulder, the cutlass swipe along his ribs and cut glass shards in his arms, a knife blade to her hip, a boarding axe to his, and long marks of the lash for them both, though hers were etched far deeper. The sea had broken her as it had him, broken her and remade her with steel in her soul.  
  
 _Beautiful._  
  
He pushed her and she pulled him and with an aggression that made her gasp, he had her on her back. She drew him down to her, lips melding to his, tongues twining as her hands wandered his body, feather-light and maddening. He mapped her with kisses, trailing teeth over her trembling skin, teasing her breasts with his tongue until she mewled and writhed beneath him. Christ, she was a joy to watch, head thrown back in pleasure; exposed, vulnerable, his for the taking. He tasted her pulse thrumming wildly against his lips and he shook with the strain of waiting. He felt her breath on his neck, and then her voice, lilting and liquid, whispered, “Stop fighting,”.  
  
Whether he took her or she took him he couldn’t say and he didn’t care. She took him into her with ease and her motion spoke of practice and a need that rivaled his own. She rolled her hips to meet him, so eager and so hot and tightening and oh, God he’d forgotten how good it felt. He lost himself in her and she clung to him, her nails raking fire across his back, arching and straining until she shuddered around him with a strangled scream. He pushed into her harder, fingers gripping and stomach clenching, his breath racking him in aching sobs and then the world shifted, the ship pitched, and he collapsed beside her. A cool hand brushed the hair from his eyes, and she took him in her arms as the waves rocked them both into oblivion.  
  


* * *

  
Grace woke up cold with the taste of tears on her lips. It was still dark, with no trace of dawn on the horizon through her window, and the blackness leered at her, accusing and condemning. Her nightmare had vanished beyond recalling, leaving her empty and sick. Her skin felt grimy and her very veins felt tainted and sludgy. She shivered, realizing she was naked, and shivered again when she remembered why. She didn’t have to look to know the place beside her was empty.  
  
 _What, were you expecting him to stay?_  
  
She wanted to believe it had been a mistake, but she knew herself far better than that. It had been foolish, perhaps, but his lips had been so warm and she had wanted so badly to forget, just for a little while. Forgetting was done now.  
  
Grace sat up, drawing the blanket around her shoulders and a dim little shock shot through her when she saw James silhouetted against the starboard window. He had donned his breeches but not bothered with the rest of him and the bottle of wine from earlier hung limply from his hand.  
  
“I thought you’d gone,” she murmured into the stillness. James turned to her but didn’t speak. He stood very still and even in the darkness Grace could feel his eyes on her.  
  
“Why?” he said at last, and Grace felt his gaze lift.  
  
“Why what, James?” she asked, feeling suddenly a little colder. She pulled the blanket tighter, but this chill wasn’t in the air.  
  
“Why…” he sighed. “Why did you allow me to…ah, Christ!”  
  
Grace heard the gritty slosh of wine against cheap glass as he tossed back what was clearly not the first pull. A sudden urge to charge across the cabin, wrench the bottle from his hands, and beat him soundly with it before chucking it overboard spiked through her, but, she remembered, she was conspicuously nude.  
  
 _As if that mattered now._  
  
“Persuading you to desist would have been counterproductive,” she answered, ignoring the rush of heat to her face. He gave a short, scoffing laugh and took another pull at the bottle.  
  
“Seducing me was your intention, then?”  
  
Grace bristled at the snide way “seducing” grated across his tongue, as if he thought she’d done him wrong by it.  
  
 _Did him a bloody favor, more like!_  
  
“I had no intention of luring you between my thighs until you saw fit to broadside my mouth instead of hitting me back properly,” she quipped, and she could nearly taste his shock. “I had thought to wait until we put in at Tortuga before I employed my feminine wiles against you, but it would seem you were the more eager.”  
  
He came closer, close enough to see the bewilderment on his face. “Why?” he asked again. “Why would you want—” He fell to the bed beside her and Grace instinctively gripped the blanket. “Look at me,” he said, spreading his arms. “What could possibly make me _suitable_?”  
  
“James,” Grace half-laughed. “I fail to see what argument you’re trying to make to me. You’re a most attractive man.”  
  
He stared at her, an almost wounded expression, as though she’d posed him a riddle he had no hope of solving.  
  
“What’s the matter?” Grace asked. “You don’t believe me?”  
  
He sighed, dragging a hand through his tangled hair. “I realize I…provoked the incident,” he said. “I thought perhaps that what followed was merely the result of convenience, but that’s not the case, is it?”  
  
A fluttering panic gripped Grace’s veins. James’ eyes, muted grey in the pale light, bored into her with an intensity she had never seen there before.  
  
“No,” she whispered, her throat dry. “That’s not the case.” His gaze was burning, but she couldn’t look away.  
  
“You said you had waited far too long,” he continued, his voice a low murmur under her skin. “What did you mean by that?”  
  
Grace drew a deep breath, attempting to ease the inexplicable terror she felt, but her heart only raced faster.  
  
 _Enough of this! It’s only a question._  
  
She tore her gaze from his, squeezing her eyes shut. Deep down, she could feel herself beginning to shake.  
  
“James,” she said at last. “Surely you know.”  
  
He didn’t answer. They sat side by side, the silence stretching longer between them. Grace wished he would speak; the quiet was giving her mind time to wander and it could only wander one place. Bile rose in her throat.  
  
 _I killed a man tonight. Murdered him._  
  
Her hands were clammy and cold. Her fingers ached from gripping the blanket. In her mind’s eye, a distraught widow wept beside an empty grave and doting children waited in vain for a father who would never step through their door again, who would never again bring them little prizes from the far side of the world, as she did for her Benjamin. She had killed that man, wrenched him from this mortal coil without a thought and sent him…where? Did he now sit with the white-robed hosts at the foot of God, or had he been a poor soul as damned as she?

_Ave María, chea de gracia, o Señor está contiigo bendita ti es entre tóda las muller e bendito é o froito das túas entrañas, Xesús. Santa María, Nai de Deus--_

  
“Grace?”  
  
She jolted back to reality with a gasp. James was staring at her again, though this time his eyes were worried.  
  
“Are you all right?” he asked. Grace tried to feign a smile and found she couldn’t.  
  
“I’m fine,” she lied, clutching the blanket and willing her voice not to tremble.  
  
“Grace, you’re shaking,” James said. “Are you cold?”  
  
The honest concern in his voice nearly broke her resolve, and she held her breath until the tightness in her throat subsided. “I am, a bit,” she answered. Her voice was steady enough.  
  
She felt James stand up, heard him set the bottle down, but couldn’t bring herself to look at him. He wasn’t supposed to see this. No one was supposed to see this.  
  
“Here,” Jams said, handing her his shirt. “It will keep you warmer than that shift.” He sat down beside her again. “I won’t watch, you know.”  
  
“I'd not mind if you did,” Grace said, but hurriedly tugged the shirt on over her head all the same. It was warm, but the shivering didn’t stop and she knew it wouldn’t, not for a long while yet. She jumped again when she felt the blanket draped around her. James’ hands rested there, squeezing her shoulders just slightly. She wanted nothing more in that moment than for him to hold her together while she weathered the storm that was coming. Could she even think to ask that of him?  
  
“Thank you,” she said softly, and they lapsed into silence again. For all her trembling, Grace found that she was acutely aware of James; her skin tingled under the gentle pressure on her shoulders and his breath struck little needles on the back of her neck.  
  
“You’re still shaking,” James said, and the question she half-hoped he would ask lurked behind his words. She forced a wan smile.  
  
“I’ll be fine, really,” she assured him, but her voice wavered and broke and she coughed as her throat constricted with the weight of restraining tears. She dug her teeth into her lip, nails biting into her own arms. James shifted beside her, his hands slipping off her shoulders.  
  
“Begging your pardon, but I disagree,” he said.  
  
Grace’s stomach twisted. “You’re certainly entitled to your thoughts,” she bit out, trying her hardest to focus her mind out of its guilty spiral. She was losing the struggle, and loosing it rapidly. She could see Skinner’s frightened, begging eyes as clearly as if he lay in front of her now, his pleas for mercy ringing in her memory. Her breath shuddered in her throat.  
  
“Grace?”  
  
 _Non. Eu non podo mirar._  
  
James’ fingers brushed her face and he turned her to look at him. A tear or two escaped Grace’s eyes and she clenched them shut to stem the tide.  
  
“Grace, I’ve been a soldier since I was a boy,” James said, his voice quiet. “Don’t think for a moment that this is unfamiliar to me or that I'd think less of you for it.”  
  
She opened her eyes. James gave her a weak half-smile, caressing the tears from her cheek with a calloused thumb. She leaned into his touch, drawing what comfort she could from his closeness. Turning in to his hand, she pressed a soft kiss to his palm; she felt him shudder and sigh.  
  
“I should leave you,” he said softly. He drew his hand away, but his fingers trailed along her jaw. He stood to leave, and Grace felt cold grip her from her core, a frigid panic deep enough to ice her soul.  
  
“Stay,” she whispered into the dark. James looked back at her, brows drawn in surprise and a sad sort of sincerity.  
  
“You want me here?” he asked, his voice as dry as hers.  
  
“Yes."  
  
The reply was barely audible, but it trembled the air between them like a plucked bowstring. Slowly, James sat back down beside her, raising a hand to her face again. A teary laugh broke from Grace’s throat, and without hesitation James wrapped his arms around her. Her resolve gave way, and she collapsed against him as the storm took her. James didn’t speak a word, but there was no need for it—the strength of his arms was enough.  
  
Eventually, her tears dried her shaking eased away. She drifted on the edge of sleeping, feeling safe and small curled against James’ chest; even asleep, his arms were still tight around her. As she slipped out of wakefulness, she felt the sea shift beneath the boards of her ship. The winds had changed.  
  


**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Ai, que bo!-Oh, how clever!
> 
> Ave María, chea de gracia, o Señor está contiigo bendita ti es entre tóda las muller e bendito é o froito das túas entrañas, Xesús. Santa María, Nai de Deus--: Hail Mary, full of grace, the Lord is with thee. Blessed art thou amongst women and blessed is the fruit of thy womb Jesus. Holy Mary, Mother of God
> 
> Non. Eu non podo mirar. : No, I can't look at you.


	8. The Mermaid's Purse

James couldn't remember a mere two days ever feeling so long as these, nor could he recall the confines of a ship being so stifling. It was trying to go about a sailor's business when he didn't dare look at the captain for fear of what he might see staring back at him.

He frowned down at the rum in his hands, letting the surrounding song slip by him. It was a fine night; clear sky, warm wind, and this bit of revelry was a matter of course. James had concealed himself in the corner of the deck, even though the captain was nowhere to be seen.

“... _Her lips is red and her hair is curly_

_Oh Sally, she'n my 'Badian beauty!”_

He tossed his empty bottle aside, twisting the stopper from another despite his conscience's feeble protest. The rum just didn't burn the way it used to, and he needed it. He had new dreams now, dreams that left him volatile, with images half fantasy and half memory shivering in his skin. He drank, but the rum couldn't drown the taste of her lips.

 “... _Oh Sally she'n my bright mulatta,_

_Sally gal she do what she ought ta.._.”

James cursed, dragging a hand across his face. He should have expected this, but truth be told in the years since his last dalliance he'd forgotten the intensity of it. He had found that he could live with this part of himself so long as he denied it, but one taste and it consumed him to the point where he couldn't fathom why he had ever seen reason to fight it.

What was the matter with him? He'd had his desire, the deed was done; so why couldn't he look her in the eye?

_You're a damned fool._

He raised the bottle but choked on his mouthful of rum as a heavy hand thudded his back in a brusque clap.

“Bleeding Christ!" he swore, coughing as he wiped his chin with his shirt cuff. With a rolling laugh, Ames swung himself onto a crate opposite him.

"Hiding are you, Jimmy-lad?" he asked. "You ought to join us. We make port tonight!"

"Thank you, Ames, but I'll decline," James said.

"Ah, I thought ye might. Give us a pull, there," he gestured for the rum and James handed it over. Ames took a long swallow. "Not much for ye off ship, is there?"

"I can drink just as well here," James said.

"That ye can, that ye can," Ames said, but when he passed the bottle back, he was hesitant. “Captain don't take too kindly to it though, do she?”

James' throat was suddenly dry. He knocked back more rum to quench it, but the remembered thrill of lips and tongue conjured by just a mention of her lingered. Ames leaned forward, a conspiratorial twinkle in his eyes. “So. How was she, then?”

James blinked. “Pardon?”

“The captain, mate. How was she?” Ames asked again, this time accompanied by a wink. 

James felt his blood freeze in his veins, even as a grin threatened to tug at his mouth. “What in Christendom are you on about, Ames?”

_I'll be damned if I answer that!_

“I been sailin' with that woman since she were little more n' a slip of a girl,” Ames said. “Only man left from those days, matter of fact. Like me own daughter she is, an' I know when she takes a man 'tween her sheets. She's got a way about her these days I en't seen on her nigh on ten years now. She won't have none of this lot, so it's got to be you, Jimmy-lad.”

Ames' tone was light as it ever was, but there was a drive behind his words that James didn't doubt was fueled by a fatherly affection. He had known there was a deep history between Grace and her first mate, but he hadn't considered it could extend as far back as her pirating days.

_Who else would know her half so well?_

Ames was watching him, waiting on an answer, his expression so stern it seemed impossible he had been dancing a reel just moments before. “This lot'll know soon enough yer the captain's man,” he said. “She won't get no trouble from 'em on that score. Still.” He lowered his voice. “There's other things what make more dangerous whispers.”

James cleared his throat. “I may look little better than boot scum, Ames, but I've managed to cling to enough decorum to know what happens in the captain's bed has no place in the crew's ears. You know her well.”

They regarded each other for a moment, man to man, and then Ames' beard twitched in a small smile and he nodded. James raised the bottle to him and drank. His estimation of the first mate had risen considerably, and he had the sense that Ames' opinion of him had risen, as well. However much the crew respected Grace, even feared her, one rumor of tears and her command would crumble.

“How long have you been with the _Glory_?” James asked.

“Weren't always the _Glory_ , were it?” Ames answered, gesturing for the bottle again. “This girl here en't Miss Grace's first set o' sails. No, afore her it were the _Vengeance_.”

“Under Daniel Monroe?”

Ames' eyes grew wary. “Aye. For a time.”

Daniel Monroe, whose clothing he wore, who Grace refused to discuss.  _Vengeance,_ her first command. Together they struck a chord in his memory, but a faint one and far away.

“And this Daniel Monroe, he made the captain a pirate?”

Ames sighed. “If she en't told, it's none o' mine to say.” He passed the bottle back; it was empty. “She keeps things close, but ask her if yer keen to know. She's taken a shine to ye. Might be she'll give ye a word or two. But might be she won't. She were a smuggler long afore she took ships fer His Majesty an' if a smuggler don't want a thing known then, by God, not a soul'll know it.”

The burly man heaved to his feet, surveying the deck. “Best call the watch,” he said. “An' you best get up to the helm, Jimmy-lad. Yer no use to her skulkin' down here.”

Ames strode off and the music faltered as the men for the next watch quit their revelry and took to the lines. James turned the now empty bottle over in his hands, his thoughts turning with it. He wanted to go to the captain. He did, and though he could still feel the memory of her body it was the echo of her sobbing that kept his feet planted. Her taking him to her bed had been nothing compared to her shaking and weeping in his arms. He had never meant to see it. Some things were meant for solitude and darkness; but she had asked and how could he have left her then? From across the deck where a new group of men were taking up a new tune, Ames caught his eye and gave a jerk of his head towards the helm.

Grace was alone at the wheel, hair tied back against the wind. She didn't smile when she saw him, but her eyes were welcoming.

“I was expecting you,” she said. “A bit sooner perhaps, but I was waiting.”

_No sense in dancing around it, then._

James drew himself up, hands behind him, back straight. The stance felt foreign to him now, like an actor's imitation, but damn it all he had some shred of propriety left in him still!

_However deep I must dig for it._

“Captain, I—”

“James, please.” The look she gave him was almost jesting, but he took the meaning. They were far beyond such formalities now. James took a breath and let his stance relax.

“Grace,” he began again. “I feel I owe you an apology.” 

“Do you?” she said. “And what wrong have you done me now?”

“The other night...I never meant to intrude and I am sorry.”

Grace had become very still, her eyes fixed on some faraway point only she could see.

“I have taken two men to my bed before you, and many nights at that,” she said after a while. She looked at him then, and he felt as though a pane of glass that he hadn't seen between them before had shattered. For just a moment, James did not see a captain. He did not see a cutthroat or a merchant or a pirate. He saw only a woman, worn and yet still enduring beyond all expectation.

_As worn as I am._

“Neither of those men ever saw what you have seen,” she continued. “Had I wanted you gone, I would not have asked you to stay.”

“I...who are you, Grace?” he asked.

She smiled at him. A playful grin, but he noticed it didn't quite reach her eyes.

“You're an exceptional man, James Norrington,” she said. “But not quite so exceptional as that. That's a story that will cost you dear.”

James grinned in return. “Name your price.”

“Spend your time ashore with me,” Grace said. “We can make a nightly trade, secret for secret. Do you remember?”

He did. He remembered rum, and starlight in her wild hair and the ice behind her eyes when he asked one question too many. It felt as though years had passed since that first night of talk.

“I remember you breaking the rules,” he said.

“And I remember you breaking them first,” Grace countered.

James laughed. Not his usual bitter bark, but a deep, honest laugh unsoured by sarcasm. For the first time in longer than his dishonor, for the first time in years it seemed, James Norrington was  _laughing_ .

“Well,” he said, coming to stand opposite Grace with the wheel between them. “I am a scoundrel after all, am I not?”

“That you are,” Grace said.

“And we scoundrels must be honest with each other, mustn't we?”

Grace's eyes darted over his face for a moment, searching, quick as a bird, and then she leaned across the wheel and kissed him. There was warmth in it, but it too was quick and there was a curious smirk on her lips when they parted from his.

“I'm not a scoundrel, James,” she said. “I'm a smuggler.” 

That night when at last they disembarked at Tortuga, James thought the docks of the pirate port and the lights gleaming along the streets looked much like any other port he'd seen. And when Grace kissed him long and slow right there on the pier, he found he didn't mind the place at all.

 

* * *

 

Grace had never been fond of Tortuga, even in her pirating days. It was loud and crowded and the streets were too full of scrawny children with hollow cheeks and too-wide eyes. On previous stops, she had held the  _Glory_ in port no longer than it took to resupply and for her men to play. It was never more than three days, and she stayed aboard ship unless her presence was absolutely required. 

But not this time.

“This is a brothel,” James said, taking in the heavy curtains in the many windows of _The Mermaid's Purse_. 

“Yes,” Grace said. “And?”

She bit back a laugh at the look on his face, a mix of confusion and an internal struggle with the vestiges of his sense of propriety. Despite the disreputable look of him and his admission to being a scoundrel, he was still very much the gentleman in many ways. She was a little surprised, then, when his expression shifted to a sly one and she felt his sea-worn fingers playing along her neck.

“I was under the impression that neither of us had any need for such an establishment,” he said. 

“Here, you!” Grace said, batting him off but grinning all the same. “I prefer to sleep _comfortably_ while I'm ashore. And besides their soft beds, brothels are protected by law.”

 James looked around, arching an eyebrow at her. Even here, a bit higher up the hill from the docks, the streets were festive to say the least and a brawl was taking place on the corner.

“I'd thought the lack of law was the entire point of this place,” he said and this time Grace did laugh. For the most feared pirate hunter these waters had seen in decades, she had come to realize he could be remarkably ignorant about his prey.

“Perhaps they aren't laws as such,” she said. “But there are rules to Tortuga, albeit unwritten ones. Pirates want two things when they dock here: rum and women, and preferably together. It's a cardinal sin to impede access to either and making trouble in a brothel is, well...”

“An impediment,” James finished for her, looking over the building again. “I see.”

_And he wanted to lose himself here...Santa Nai, he'd have been dead inside a week!_

Shaking off the uncomfortable thought that that might well have been what he'd intended, she slipped her arm through his and pushed the door open.

Inside it was much as she remembered, dim and smokey, the plinking of the perpetually out of tune pianoforte in the corner, and full of low couches and card tables. Many of those tables and couches were occupied, either by girls already at work or those waiting to be. It was early in the night yet, but the  _Mermaid's Purse_ was a merry place rather than a rowdy one and that was its appeal.

“Welcome t'the _Purse_ , lads,” said a brunette in jewel blue that Grace didn't recognize. “What's t'be your pleasure?” 

Grace caught the girl's hand as she reached up to stroke her face. “There's no need for that,  _neniña_ ,” she said, smiling at her. She beckoned the girl closer and whispered so that James wouldn't hear. “Tell Connie the Widow Grace is here to see her, would you?” 

The girl in blue scampered off and Grace led James over to an empty couch to wait. He looked calm enough, but she could feel the tension in his arm and when a very pretty young man stood to climb the stairs with his patron, she thought his jaw might crack from being ground so tight.

“Not going to fall faint from shock on me, are you?” she asked. 

James scoffed. “I should think not. I  _have_ been in a brothel before.”

“Oh, have you now?” Grace said, smirking as the implication of his words dawned on him. She slid a hand across his stomach, toying with the buttons of his waistcoat and enjoying the sudden jolt in his breathing. “Was it a...pleasant experience for you?”

“Decidedly not,” he said and his voice had that bite to it that she found so pleasing. She turned his face to her, scratching her fingertips lightly through his beard. That made him smile a little. 

“Though this one is already much improved,” he murmured against her lips.

Sometimes in rough seas, the ship would jump on a wave and Grace would feel her whole body run from ice to hot coals from the thrill of it. Kissing James was like that. Every time, her balance faltered. His mouth was soft and tasted of rum, but he felt like chocolate and rich coffee.

“Oi! Snoggin' in the parlour's fer paid cust'mers _only_!”

Grace broke off the kiss and whipped around. “Have you gone blind since last I saw you, Shark-eye?” she said. “Can't even tell your lass from a lad anymore?”

A grizzled old man draped in pistols limped out from behind the counter, leaning on an equally gnarled cane. “Blow me down an' pick me up!” he laughed. “Gracie, lass!”

“It's good to see you again, Samuel,” Grace said, standing to shake his hand. “Shot anyone lately?”

“Ar,” the old gunman said, scratching his scarred face. “Always a couple or so thinkin' they c'n come in here makin' trouble fer my doves. Keeps me sharp.” He stepped back, squinting at her. “Seems I en't t'only one shot a man lately.”

“He made some trouble,” she said and Sam nodded. Legend was, Shark-eye Sam had come out of the womb with pistols at the ready in his tiny hands. That much was doubtful, but the man who had taught her shoot as well as she did could always tell when she'd pulled the trigger on a man's life.

“Who's yer longshank friend here?” Sam said, prodding at James' feet with his cane. James may not have been shocked by the brothel itself, but he certainly was now.

“Show some manners, you old barnacle!” Grace said. “Shark-eye Sam, this is Sir James, vagrant knight and hand for hire.”

Sam merely squinted as he ever did, but James stood and gave a short bow proper enough for any court. He seemed to have warmed to Cromley's moniker for him over the past months and so Grace had decided embellish it herself. In Tortuga, a touch of legend however farfetched went a long way and James needed all the latitude he could get. At the least, it would dampen any curiosity about his manner of speech. It was lazier now than it had been, but it was still noticeably crisp.

_If only I could have talked him out of that coat!_

Out of the corner of her eye, Grace saw an elegant woman with slick, black hair sweep through the curtained door behind the counter. Her coral and gold dress was quite possibly the finest and most expensive on the island and her fingers, neck, and ears were draped in sumptuous jewelry, dazzling against her dark skin. As the madam of the  _Purse_ , Connie took the pirates' maxim “wear your wealth” very much to heart. 

Grace left Samuel to regale James on the finer points of shooting and joined Connie behind the counter.

“My, my! Look at you, dearie!” Connie said, hugging her. “Sheared off your hair since you was in last. Here, I thought you'd gone and turned lawful.”

“I'm hardly lawful,” Grace said. “I'm just not quite so law _less_ as I was.”

“So how's it come you haven't been t'see us then?” the older woman asked and Grace cringed a little at her tone. “Last time you was here was what...eight years back? Shameful!”

“Surely Richard told you I was well,” Grace said, feeling ten years-old and at the mercy of her grandmother again. She hadn't visited _The Mermaid's Purse_ since Benjamin, but Richard was the last of her old crew and he still came to pay his respects and hers. There was little that went on in Tortuga that Connie didn't know; it was profitable to be in her good graces.

“Richard is a good man what pays his bill with no trouble, Lord love him,” Connie said. “He told us plenty. But his face en't near so pretty as yourn. We missed you, Shark-eye an' me. Hell, even some o'the girls missed you.”

Grace sighed leaning on the counter. “I've missed you as well, Connie,” she said. “There have been some rough winds for me, but even so. I ought to have come before.”

“That you oughtta. But now I got you under my roof, you're _stayin'_ under it 'til I say otherwise!” Connie declared. “And you can take proper time tellin' me 'bout those rough winds.”

“I hoped you would say that,” Grace said, smiling. “Though this time I'm not on my own.”

She nodded towards James who was now looking over one of Sam's pistols and listening to the old man with unfeigned interest. Connie whistled low through her teeth.

“My, that's a fine 'un, dearie an' no mistake,” she said and fixed Grace with a hawkish stare. “A mite _too_ fine, truth be. Man in that coat, talkin' the way he do, word spreads fast.”

Grace straightened and turned her back on the room. “He signed on in Minorca,” she said, keeping her voice low. “The coat's his, but not the office that goes with it.”

Connie's eyes narrowed. “I been hearin' some mighty strange tales these days,” she said. “Boys been comin' in with more coin than usual, better tempers, too, sayin' the seas is safe again. If that man there is who I'm thinkin' he might be—”

“Unless those tales are saying he's dead, you make sure to put an end to them,” Grace said. She had known the news of James' disappearance would have made its way to Tortuga and Constance Jenkins wasn't the only one sharp enough to piece together the picture he made with his captain's coat and his proper speech. “I want you to put my name out on him, Connie.”

“Which name'd that be, then?”

“You know which one,” Grace said quietly, twisting the chain of her necklace around her fingers. It was a risk, but a small one. It wouldn't save him from a beating, but whispers of the Widow struck some fear still and none would dare to kill a man with that name hovering over him, even now after so long.

_Even if he is the Commodore._

“I'll put it out,” Connie said. “An' I'll keep mum on who he is, talk it up he's drowned or the like.” She grinned. “But Lord, I'm not t'only one'd love to hear tell of the Scourge taken to a woman's bed! Any of them rumors about him true, dearie?” 

“Which rumors might those be?” Grace said, all false innocence. “Last door on the left still for guests?” 

“That it be,” Connie said, unhooking a key from the ring of them around her waist. “Just had it aired out all fine, too.” 

“Until morning, then,” Grace said, taking the key with a grin. She was enjoying herself, she realized, more than she maybe should. But _The Mermaid's Purse_ was safe and she'd forgotten the freedom of that in the years she'd stayed away.

“Begging your pardon, Samuel, but your audience is needed elsewhere,” she said, clapping the old man on the shoulder.

“You've a fine set of weapons, Samuel,” James said, handing the pistol back.

“Course I do, course I do!” Sam grumbled and turned to Grace. “Good to have ye back, lass.” He tugged her down to mutter in her ear, “I like him. Knows his guns, he does.”

Hefting her pack over her shoulder, Grace motioned for James to follow and together they climbed the stairs.

“I rather like that old man,” James said, chuckling. “He told me if I rough-handled you he would put a bullet between my eyes. If you didn't do it first, that is.”

“And well he would,” Grace said. “There's a reason no one beats a girl who tricks at the _Purse_.”

“More Tortuga law?” James asked, leaning against the wall while she unlocked the door and she nodded. “However did you come by such accomplished friends?”

“Oh, no you don't!” Grace said with a smirk, tugging him into the room after her. “You'll not get a word from me on that until I know all about your previous excursions into houses of ill-repute. And have _thoroughly_ replaced those memories.”

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This story is *technically* completed, but I've been busy working on original fiction and so I haven't touched this or its sequel in over a year. But I missed it and I felt bad for leaving it unfinished.


	9. The Faithful Bride

The sunlight streaming through the window and the quiet breathing beside her were almost enough to make her forget where she really was. She had woken on the edge of the mattress with no blanket again. She glared over her shoulder. James was asleep, arms and legs akimbo, the blanket tangled in his long limbs. He was a fitful sleeper, even without the nightmares.

 His vitriol towards Jack rivaled her own, and it pleased her in a way, but whenever James spoke about him, which he did sometimes when he'd had more than she liked, she said nothing of it. He wouldn't take kindly to the knowledge that his bitter enemy had a role of sorts in her life. Such a thing asked caution in the telling, not the glibness of their game. They had made a bargain, secret for secret, but she had never said whether the secrets would be hers or when she would reveal them. When he asked of her family, she told him that her mother had died in sickness and her father at sea. When he asked where she was born, she told him, “Far away from here”. But when he asked about Daniel, she found she couldn't speak, not even a half-truth.

 Sleepily, Grace slipped out of bed and stretched, enjoying the lack of pain in the motion and the sensation of the warm, land air on her skin. Neither of them had bothered to dress before sleep. There wasn't much point to it. The nights often cooled, but James ran hot when he slept, and besides it was foolish to put clothes on when they were sure to come off again in a hurry. She filled the washbasin and splashed the water over her face, letting the droplets trickle down her neck and into her hair. She couldn't help but smile to herself.

 James was only her third lover, a fact which had surprised him somewhat, though Grace didn't mind his assumption otherwise; she was a deviation in that regard from the few other women of the sea. After Ben had been born, she had spurned all comers for fear of discovery and betrayal.

  _And another child._

 But of those three men she had brought to her bed, James was different and different in a way that she was coming to find was both a thrill and a terror. His coat lay crumpled on the floor where he had tossed it the night before, and she picked it up, running her hands over the fraying brocade. She slipped in on. She was broad shouldered for a woman and it fit her well, though even on James she'd noticed it hung slacker than it had when he'd first come aboard. He was muscle over bone now, like her; whatever officer's softness he'd had had been worn away, beaten and tempered. Grace hugged the rough cloth against her skin. The deep blue fabric was faded, mud-stained and blood-stained in places, several buttons missing. Yet still, he clung to it, this fading and fraying remnant of an old life. Her thoughts turned to the monogrammed sea chest locked away beneath her bunk. James wasn't the only one who clung to the pieces left in the wake of the storm.

 “You cut a finer figure in that than I ever did.”

 Grace was not a timid woman, she never had been, even before, but standing there with nothing but the remnant of James' past around her shoulders and his eyes roaming her with a warmth that was scalding, she felt her face flush.

  _How does he do that?_

 “Any nefarious dealings to be done today?” he asked with a smile. That was a more frequent occurrence over the past days—a smile unsharpened by his sarcasm.

 “Just the one,” Grace said, sitting. “It's the last I need to make before—”

 “Before we sail at noon tomorrow?” James cut in.

 Grace's heart was suddenly in her throat. “You say 'we' with a great deal of certainty.”

 James sat up and joined her at the edge of their bed. “Should I not?”

 She looked at him, his brow furrowed over masked eyes, trying and failing to hide what churned behind them. There was a pull between them, she knew. But how strong of a pull?

 “My God, James, I don't know,” she said. “I don't know.”

 “Had your fill of me?” he said, and his smile this time was a sad one.

 Something hot and almost rageful bubbled up in Grace's gut and crackled along her skin.

Her fingers dug into his hair and she kissed him—hard. He grunted in surprise but quickly returned the favor.

 “I suppose that would be a 'no',” he said.

 “You wager your damned hide it's a 'no',” Grace murmured against his lips. They were so surprisingly soft and his skin was hot under her hands, slipping over his thighs, thumbs tracing his hip bones, pressing him back into the bedding with her teeth at the hollow of his throat. Her blood was thrumming and she took him easily, a delightful shuddering of brief pain and dizzy hunger unraveling in the core of her. James' fingers clawed at her, gripping her hips as she rolled into him. Slow. Waves breaking on the shore and receding with a sigh.

 She had him and she needed him. Deeper. And more, more; always more and deeper until they were melded flesh and sweat and those low little moans slipped from his parted lips to stir molten fire in her belly. Her breath became ragged and the waves became a tempest, a maelstrom to tear him apart and wrap herself in his soul.

 She didn't move away when he'd finished, but stayed astride him as her heart resumed its normal rhythm. James was smiling, a lazy kind of smile and there was laughter in his eyes; a bit wry, perhaps, but honest. Had his smile been so easy in the days before, when he had worn the coat that covered her now pristine and starched, the mantle of the Scourge of the Caribbean? Had his green eyes been so warm before he'd drowned himself in rum and grief? Or had he simply traded one cannon on his bootstraps for another, duty and discipline for a tawny glass bottle and a course without a heading?

  _Could I be a heading for him?_

 “Do you want to come with me, James?” she asked.

 He grinned. “As your captain's man?”

 “Well, I...I suppose that's what you would be,” Grace said. “I've never had a lover aboard my ship before.”

  _Except for Daniel. But I was his and not the other way 'round._

 “Would there be grumbling amongst the crew?”

 “From some, perhaps,” Grace said. “But they'd be silenced long before they could do more than grumble over a dice game. I pick my boys rarely and well.”

 “Even me?”

 Grace grinned and kissed him. “You were exceptional.”

 She slid herself off of him and stretched, relishing the ache in her thigh muscles. She took a deep breath. The air was heavy with rain and smoke, dust and tar; it was almost good.

 “When you say 'exceptional' you mean my value. Don't you?”

 “Once a pirate, always a pirate. At least a little,” Grace answered. “The mind of it gets in you and it never really leaves. But you were worth stealing, I think.”

 She turned to gather her clothes and didn't notice the sudden sourness creeping back into James' smile.

 

* * *

 

  _The Faithful Bride_ was a squat, dim place set on an alley just off the docks. Every surface seemed to be covered in a layer of grime and there were stains on the floors and the tables that clearly had murderous origins, but as Grace told it this was the heart of business on Tortuga. This was the house where deals were done, crews signed, news passed.

 Grace sat beside him, her hands wrapped around a mug of rum, but she didn't drink. She never did. She said she needed her wits about her always, but he suspected it was to deter his own indulgence, at least in part.

 She looked much as she had when he'd first seen her, thought she took fewer pains to hide her sex. Tortuga was a world unto itself, she claimed, and it this world she had a reputation that was useful. The name of Edward Grace, even if it was a known falsehood in this port, seemed to command an odd respect. More than one grizzled and maimed salt had tipped his hat to her. All these men her knew something of her, something she had kept her teeth clenched tight on when it came to him.

  _Exceptional. Once a pirate, always a pirate._

 James drank deep from his own mug, pretending to ignore Grace's eyes flicking towards him as he did so. He had felt out of sorts since that morning, more so than he had for this past fortnight and he couldn't place his finger on it. Grace's reluctance to honor the terms of their game, silly as it may be, was becoming an irritation, especially since he had been so forthcoming himself, and it would become more so once they sailed and he became her captain's man in truth.

  _Exceptional._

 “Do you hear it, James?”

 “Hm? What do I hear?”

 “The rumbling,” Grace said. “Just under the music.”

 James listened, trying to tune out the caterwauling of hornpipes that passed for music in pirate ears. “I hear it. What of it?”

 Grace jabbed him in the ribs with her elbow. “Don't play dull, James, “ she said. “You were a captain. You know how to read a room of men. Look at them, huddled up like that. _Talking_.”

 Glancing around the room James could see she was right. But how out of turn was it for pirates to gather in this way? A year ago he might have thought it an impossibility of their nature.

  _You_ _ were _ _a captain. Exceptional._

 “So some business is afoot,” he said.

 “Aye, and a big business too, to have all these men ashore and parlaying.” Grace sat up to attention suddenly, her eyes on the doorway. “And here's my chance to find out what it might be. Wait here.”

 James obeyed without a word and watched as she shook hands with a striking mulatta woman and vanished with her into a corner. Another lady captain, like as not. Between the crews and the captain's dollies, he'd seen more women disembark in this port than he ever would have imagined possible. Clearly the warning that a woman at sea was poor luck for the ship went widely unheeded and disbelieved under the black flag.

  _I had no woman aboard and a man can hardly have worse luck._

 He hadn't had so bitter a thought in weeks and it panged him. He'd not forgotten the hurricane. Far from it. He dreamed it every night still, as Grace had discovered; thunder and gale and rain and corpses crying with familiar voices, pulling him down into the deep. No, he had not forgotten, but one by one the ghosts had begun to sleep, during his waking hours at least.

  _You_ _ were _ _a captain._

 Were. _Were_. A past tense, a thing gone by.

  _What am I now?_

 He wasn't a pirate. Or was he? The _Glory_ 's colors were red, but her hold cradled stolen goods. And what color was her captain's heart, truly? What color was his own becoming? He was accomplice to an act of piracy, after all, however unknowingly at the time and he found his conscience disconcertingly untroubled by it.

  _Once a pirate, always a pirate. But not once a Commodore._

 He had not forgotten Sparrow, either; he drained his mug to the dregs.

 Another was pushed towards him.

 “Looks to me as though yeh've gone dry, _Commodore_.”

 “Not anymore,” James said, narrowing his eyes at the stranger over the rim of the mercifully full mug. “And I'm no Commodore. Who in the legions of Hell are you? ”

 “Aye. That yeh're not,” the stranger said, sitting. He was a short man, Scottish if James was any judge, with beady eyes the color of bilge water and a face like old duff. James didn't like him.

 “So the question is, what are ye?” the stranger continued.

 James pulled his pistol from his belt, aiming it lazily at the man's nose. “What I am is inclined to shoot you if you don't answer my question.”

 The man leaned forward, undeterred. “What ye are, Commodore, is a hopeless man who's settled for a lot less than his worth.”

 James snorted and clicked back the hammer. “That wasn't an answer. And I've settled for far more than I'm worth, I assure you.”

 “Oh, have ye, now?” the man said and a sealed envelope appeared in his gloved hand. Even in the dim light James could see the pattern pressed into the wax.

 “And what does the East India Trading Company want with this hopeless man? Except to fit his neck for a tight, hemp collar?”

 “Nothing,” the man said. “Nothing at all. My employer has no use for him. It's a desperate man he needs. Are ye a desperate man, Commodore?”

 “I'm no Commodore.”

 “No. Not yet,” the man said, and his thin lips pulled into a semblance of a grin. “Drink t' hand and a woman on th' other. A harsh penance, to be sure. Ye made a fine pirate right quick, didn't ye, _Commodore_.” He slid the envelope across the table and was gone.

 James tucked his pistol away and snatched the letter off the table. Grace was nowhere to be seen. What could the East India Trading Company possibly want with him that wasn't connected with her, smuggler that she was? And yet, somehow, someone had known to search for him here, someone who knew how it would gall him to hear his old title on a mocking tongue.

  _This is meant for me alone._

 He broke the seal.

  _To Mr. James Norrington; Regards._

  _I was most grieved to hear of your recent misfortunes. As a man of means and His Majesty's favor I find I am in the position to offer you more than empty sympathies._

  _It is my impression that we are men of a similar nature and purpose in the world; to whit, we both labor to purge His Majesty's seas of the stain of piracy, that vile breed of men your vigilance against which is almost the stuff of legend in our dear England. In particular, I believe I am not mistaken in the attestation that we share a mutual enemy; one Jack Sparrow, styling himself captain._

  _I have it on most reliable information that Sparrow and his associates are to pass through the nest of iniquity known as Tortuga very soon. Sparrow is a man of peculiar eccentricities and superstitions as you are no doubt aware; You are also no doubt aware that there is at the least a grain of truth to them._

  _There is a particular item in Sparrow's possession, a compass, appearing broken to the unaware observer, that I would be very grateful to have delivered to my uses. I am certain that by now you are aware that a warrant was issued for your arrest in connection with the escape of the aforementioned, and that you have thus deemed any return to the life of a civilized man an impossibility. Do not despair; redemption is not so rare a commodity. In return for the delivery of this compass I have described, I am prepared to offer you a pardon for these crimes as well as to fit you with a ship and a commission to serve His Majesty in the office of privateer. A man of impassable skill and zeal such as yourself ought not to be cast aside and wasted when there is so much good yet to be done upon the high seas._

  _Yours in business,_

  _Lord Cutler Beckett_

 The letter crumpled in his clenched fist. He tipped his mug for another swallow and realized it was empty. He grabbed Grace's abandoned one instead.

 He remembered that damned compass. That infernal spinning thing! He had puzzled over it for a long while, pointing it this way and that, and always it led him to Elizabeth; what he had wanted most in the world and all she stood for. Where would it point him if he were to hold it now, in this new world? Would it lead him to her still? Or to Grace? Or to this promise of redemption?

 Fetch me the compass and your crimes are washed clean. Fetch me the compass and see Sparrow disgraced. Fetch me the compass and you can be as you were.True, a privateer was not so high as he had been, but it would be _his_ ship, _his_ sails. He would be his own man once again. The stranger's talk of desperate men made suddenly made sense. Here it was, this second chance he had never thought to hope for, hanging just above his grasp and all he need do was reach. Did he have it in him to reach? Did he even want to?

  _Ye make a fine pirate. Once a pirate, always a pirate. Once a pirate...a fine pirate...a fine penance..._

 Panic gripped him, like cold steel through his gut and he felt sick. The stranger had been right. This Lord Beckett was right. He was _comfortable_ here in this underworld, in Grace's world. This was no penance he was doing, this was hiding. This was cowardice. He had failed even at making amends to himself.

 And Grace...he had craved the oblivion and anonymity of Tortuga for so long he hadn't realized that he no longer did. But when he had seen her that morning, wrapped in his coat with sunlight in her sleep-tousled hair, he had known. He felt _good_ around her, better than he remembered feeling even before Sparrow. It was Grace who had finally begun to drown his grief, not the rum, and he wanted to follow her. He wanted her laughter and her sad smiles and her crossing herself each night before they slept when she didn't think he was watching. He wanted the scent of her skin and the curve of her neck. He wanted her arms tight around him when he woke from the nightmares and he wanted her firm hand to curb his drinking, since he couldn't seem to manage the task on his own. He wanted this mad and merry rover's life she offered.

  _And my men wanted me to change course._

 No. He could not, _would_ not, enjoy this life. It was too neat, too simple; a reward for recompense not paid. But he would pay it, and pay it well.

 James drained his mug and tore the letter to bits. He wouldn't need it. Sparrow would come here when he docked—the fool bastard was always in need of a crew—and he would find a hot lead reckoning awaiting him when he did. James found himself smiling at the thought. Deal with Sparrow, reclaim his life, and spend it in doing what he could not for his men.

_434 souls…willingly and in full knowledge of the danger…_

A life with Grace, however hard and criminal, was no payment for so heavy a debt. Not with what he knew he was beginning to feel.

  _I'm sorry._

 He stood and laughed a little to himself as the room swayed. It all felt so familiar.

  _Grace...my God, you must know I want it!_

 He took his bottle from the barkeep and forced himself through the door and into the throng of the street.

  _Please know. Grace...my Grace...please, God, let her know._

 He drank deep, welcoming the harshness and the swill, letting the rum run in sticky tears down his neck. He wandered farther. He made himself lost and made himself sleep.

 When Grace returned to the table, she found nothing but empty mugs and shredded parchment. When she returned to their room, she found nothing at all.

 And from a dim, cramped room across from the _Faithful Bride_ , Mercer watched a man in a bedraggled Navy coat stagger into the crowd and he smiled his thin smile. It was a desperate man his lord needed, and it was a desperate man he had made.


	10. Epilogue: What Shall We Do With a Drunken Sailor?

_So am I worthy to serve under Captain Jack Sparrow? Or should I just kill you now?_

_Worthy. Funny. Should have just shot him._

He ached and he stank. His head was pounding and not from drink; he would have to wait for morning for that pleasure. The hands on his shoulders were tentative but gentle. A woman's hands. They must be.

_Grace....I'm so sorry._

He turned, spitting mud and blinking through the rum and the pain, but the face that met him was too narrow, the hair peeking out from under the hat too dark.

“James Norrington, what has the world done to you?” 

The voice was too light, too young, too crisp. There was no music in it. But he knew it. Oh, yes, he knew it.

“Nothing I didn't deserve,” he said, groaning as he heaved to his feet. The ground tipped, but it did that often anymore and he was practiced at keeping his footing. His stomach was roiling and trying to climb up his throat and everything was sideways. He hadn't been this drunk in days. Just like Sparrow to swagger in at the most inopportune moment.

He had a good look at her, then. She looked...small. Uneasy, in boy's clothes too big for her. Half scared of the sword on her hip.

_Timid. Too weak for the sea, after all, is she?_

He began to laugh, but his stomach succeeded in its escape and he quickly turned away, arm wrapped around a nearby post while he retched. He'd become skilled at that, too.

“James, are you...you're drunk!”

He spat and wiped his mouth with an even filthier coat cuff. He spun to face her and found himself grinning; the scenery kept on spinning, but he didn't mind.

“Drunk as a pirate, my dear, and as dirty,” he said. “Do you like it?” She gaped at him, not dissimilar to a landed fish. “Elizabeth Swann, you hit me. With my rum. That was rude. You owe me rum.”

“James—”

“Ah, of course!” he exclaimed. “My apologies. _Mrs. Blacksmith Turner_ , you hit me and you owe me rum.”

“It's...it's still Miss Swann,” she said, fidgeting with the hem of her waistcoat. “But yes. I...I hit you.”

_Well, isn't this interesting._

Perhaps it was the rum or the blow to the head, but her correction stirred nothing in him. No sorrow, no hope, no smugness; simply nothing.

“Let's not distract from the issue, here,” he said. “Elizabeth of whatever surname pleases you this week, you owe me rum.”

“I think you've had quite enough of that,” she said. Even through his muzzy vision, James could see the defiant set to her jaw. 

_Probably right. Need my wits about me to best Sparrow._

“Hmm...I disagree,” he said. “But I relent. Doesn't change the debt, though.”

“What is the _matter_ with you?” she shrieked suddenly. “You are a better man than this!”

Beneath the rum fog, a flint struck and sparked in him. A better man. Always he was the better man. How was it not a one of them could see the truth of it? He felt his lips stretching in a devil's grin. “Oh, am I?” he said, moving toward her with steps that swayed only a little. Elizabeth's eyes widened and she inched away until she could inch no more, back to the wall of the sty. She could run so easily, but she seemed frozen, whether with surprise or in a show of mettle he couldn't say. “What's the matter with me? Oh Lizzie, dear Lizzie...I have sent hundreds of men to their deaths and I dream of corpses. I dreamed of you, too. For a little while.”

“James,” she said, and her voice seemed tiny. “Whatever it is that happened you're still a good man.”

His fists hit the wall on either side of her and to her credit she flinched only a little. “Did you never wonder if I grow tired of it?” he asked. She gaped at him, uncomprehending. “What poor lad's clothes did you steal, Miss Swann?”

“I don't know. I thought it would be...safer.”

“Ah, yes, safer, much safer,” James said. “None of those louts knew what you are. But I do.” He grinned again. “What makes you think you're so safe with me?”

Her hand cracked across his face. It wasn't a hard blow, but he staggered back, chuckling. “The last time a woman hit me—” he began, but the memory of yellow hair spilling over Navy blue and fingernails in his chest rolled over him and he shook his head to clear it.

“You may have become a scoundrel since you left Port Royal, James, but I will not believe you've sunk so low as that,” Elizabeth said. “I know you to be a good man, whether you believe it or not.”

_She knows that much at least._

“And yet you would not marry me.”

That had thrown her. She at least had the decency to look abashed. “James—”

“What are you doing here?” he asked. He didn't want to hear her apologies. They were empty and liable to make him sick again. His fingers itched for the neck of a bottle.

She hesitated, fidgeting, tugging at her sleeves. Something was very amiss; even with his vision spinning he could suss that out.

_When did I become so able to read her face?_

“I...I'm looking for Will,” she said at last. 

“Blacksmith run off on you, did he?”

“James!”

He smirked. “Jilted man's privilege, darling,” he said. “Please do continue.”

And she talked. She told him of the interrupted wedding and the warrants, the jailing and the offered pardon, of which there was only one, and of Beckett and Jack bloody Sparrow.

“Will left to find Jack, and I've come to help him,” she finished.

The absurdity of it all rolled over him, and he started to laugh. It was just…silly. The whole mess of a situation was silly. He looked at Elizabeth, and the laughter kept coming. A silly girl in a silly hat. That’s all she was.

“I think I might have hit you too hard,” she said with one of those abashed little smiles he remembered so well. Even that little smile was funny. Looking at her now, with her wide, doe-like eyes that before had seemed so fiery and sharp, he doubted she could put a lie past him ever again. He had seen her in truth at last, stripped of the halo he'd given her.

“What's so funny?” she asked.

“As providence would have it, Mr. Sparrow—oh, beg pardon— _Captain_ Sparrow has hired me to his crew,” he said, and nearly set off laughing again at her positively rapturous smile. 

“Does that mean you will help me save him? Help me save Will?”

_There's a price on my head, as well, dear Lizzie. Or did you forget?_

“I already saved him once for you,” James said, and before her smile could fade he continued. “So I'll expect payment this time.”

“Oh, James, thank you!” She hugged him, muddy and worse though he was, and together they headed for the docks. James followed a few steps behind her, still staggering some, but the world was beginning to right itself. And he found this new footing strangely welcome.

_My dear Elizabeth...you never could feel when the wind had changed._

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> That makes the end of the story. There is a sequel to it, but it's barely begun and may never be finished. We shall see, we shall see.


End file.
